if a dog walks around a tree one time

If a dog walks around a tree one time that's no cause for alarm. Dogs will do that from time to time. If a dog walks around a tree two times--hold on now I dropped my--wait a minute. 

gah dang

well now you get back here

I just--

oh my g--

if a dog--one minute now

Where was I? if--if a dog walks around the same tree two times well then he's really onto something. That's the thing about cats and dogs. One of em will just do the a thing over and over and that's how it is but the other is trying to get at something.

If a cat walks around a tree two times, it's serious. A dog could walk around a tree all day and not get bored. Cat and dog walk around a tree together two times, they're married. Cat and dog walk around the tree the other way three times, marriage annulled. 

I've studied animals. I know their ways. They walk around, get unmarried, remarried. I've got charts and tables I could show you. Rotations. Counter rotations. I'm the number one folk scientist. People say that's not real folk knowledge and science are fundamentally at odds I say, think of it this way, "The dirt makes up lies to tell itself about the dirt. And if you know that-"

Just demand to be impressed. I love people who demand to be impressed. Somebody impressed them once they said, only this from now on. I won't accept anything less. 

this is nothing

 Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over the big lake they called Gitche Gumee

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of the lake, it is said, never gives up her dead

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “When the skies of November turn gloomy

            Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak November;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more

Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named the Edmund Fitzgerald—

That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed

Nameless here for evermore

there was almost something here but it's nothing

one thing about me is you can take me to run around in a field

 I have to take myself to run around in a field. And then the me that is watching me is like "yeah, this is good for you. why'd we ever stop doing this?"

Sometimes you're an animal that just needs to run around a field.

you ever wonder where the word 'churn' comes from?

 I'll tell you

It's from Old English

the word cyrin

and it relates to agitating milk or cream.

So churn just means churn. Like it hasn't changed that much.

But I was thinking about the carbon cycle and the water cycle and the nitrogen? cycle and all the cycles and how zoomed out to some degree our existence takes place in that churning turnover of material.

I like the idea, I've always liked the idea of being part of some big process and stuff is moving in and out of me and like, if there is some notion of a soul, it's that every person has a certain resonance and like I take in water and carbon and stuff and turn it into whatever I'm all about because that's how it sticks to me. You go out in the world and certain stuff flips switches for you and then you get to flip that switch for someone else and I think that's so cool.

Caroline Rose, Yip Yip Yow, that flipped my switch. A silly simple rock song about a nonsense phrase that represents the nature to which you must be true. What a banger

A Presidents of the United States of America song in 2026? Caroline Rose's 'Yip Yip Yow'

 For those who don't know, in my list of perfect albums when I can remember them

#1- Lorde Pure Heroine

#2- The Presidents of The United States of America- The Presidents of the United States of America

I'm sure there are more but those are the top two I can think of right now. 

The 1995 debut album by the Seattle-based alt rock band is PERFECTION. 

I won't waste time with a bunch of words listen to Kick Out The Jams: https://youtu.be/yLGeRBwtPEc?si=TDOC8xW60JhnBtno

Now listen to Yip Yip Yow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Gj3maiYT4

No wait wait. Listen to--um--listen to Meanwhile Back in the City after 40 seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yOJY_m2rVk

So good. Soooooo good.

Soooooooooooooooooooooo good.

yip yip freaking yow.

just saw a commercial that said "ever since initial whisperings started trickling--"

 and then I hit skip ad.

But wow what a phrase

"initial whisperings started trickling"

One reason I like that phrase is because, depending on how you choose to pronounce them, two of the words could have two or three syllables.

whis-per-ings or whis-prings

tri-kuh-ling or -trick-ling

It's Shakespearean in that way.

It has internal rhyme too.

You also get the 'sh' in initial, the "spr" in whisperings, 'st' in started, and "tr" in trickling. That's called consonance I believe.

Initial whisperings started trickling.

It's good because it doesn't belong in an ad. 

It's like a horse in a Costco.

you've been wearing sunglasses inside with the lights turned on

the need for some big audacious conclusion

 what about the need for some big audacious conclusion?

what this blog needs is for some big audacious conclusion.

But, to really have that it's better if you've been building tension and raising the stakes in some way over time. 

This blog is like taking a really long walk and thinking stuff and sometimes finding stuff and looking at it and thinking about it.

Crab is the other character. Or possibly only character.

Teleology is the view that things are defined by their end. Things exist for the purpose of meeting an end.

Etiology is the study of causes and origins.

Deontology is unrelated to the study of Deion "Primetime" Sanders. It's the view that 'good' or 'bad' actions are independent of outcomes and the goodness or badness of something is based on its adherence to certain rules or principles. 

There is no end point to this blog. It's not building to anything. There is no origin either really. My friends in high school had them and I made one too. 

It does adhere to a certain imperative though. To post. Make a post. 

If this blog has any destiny it's to be an ancient artifact that we have long since lost the context to possibly understand.

That's where the money is.

The Eight Great Soup Dangers

 this section does not include mention of the lesser soup dangers

1- Soup too hot

2- Soup too cold

3- Soup is poison

4- Soup too salty

5- Soup too watery

6- Soup congealed

7- Soup corrupted

8- Soup too little

what if you could stack your laters to the ceiling and back?

your drive around with all your laters in the trunk of your car?

or be buried with your laters?

have all your laters with you all the time and always collecting more.

more laters. more laters.

 I was watching a video made by a climbing coach today and he was talking about climbers who prioritize safety and security and how that can lead to your world becoming smaller and smaller. If you become completely risk-averse over improving then the scope of what you're willing to try narrows. 

Some might argue that dwelling is an attitude where you intentionally shrink your world and narrow your focus and that's a fair point. I would counter that by saying if you go to a forest and just run around and try to see every tree in the forest as fast as possible you probably will see more trees than someone who stops to sit still. But the person that stops and sits is the one who's going to see the animals come out of hiding and hear the songs of the birds and experience the actual life of the woods. Anything worthwhile takes a moment of stillness to realize. Which animal comes out when someone is rushing around like a maniac? A little yippy dog. You can love a little yippy dog but do you love that it just mindlessly barks at anything and everyone? Even people that love their dog more than anything will still put on the most bitter annoyed voice you've ever heard to say, "SHUT UP COCO!"

But I also think it's a tricky thing to know which is which. I think there is worthwhile meaning to be found in doing one thing all the way but also it's a trap to close the world off because of fear. So, like, meditate on that.

was proud of my climbing league write up today

 WEEK THREE (but it’s your dad talking while you have to help him in the garage)

The thing about Climbing League, kids, is this: they’re gonna try to tell you after Week Two that it’s all wrapped up with a pretty bow and said and done and nothing to see here and better start heading to your cars early to beat the traffic. That’s a trick, okay? Now they’re not lying to you about the numbers. The numbers are what the numbers are. But what they’re doing is engaging in psy-cho-logistical warfare, ya follow? Sigmund Freud and his best good friend Sun Tzu and all that. They’re trying to differentiate the ones who signed up because they thought, shoot maybe I’ll do well at this and the ones who bark at cars just because they can. Heck, they might not even know what a car is. But that doesn’t stop them from barking. Are you smelling the fumes being released from the decaying leaves at the bottom of this river bed that I’m stepping in? Can you grasp the odor? It smells like poopy, don’t it? Well it ain’t doo-doo water. It’s bio-degradation-able material of the carboniferous sort. Makes the ever-loving world go round.

We should get Team Papa's Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate - The Sequel: ENDGAME Extended Addition’s hearing checked because I think they might be physically incapable of hearing the bell. Team Papa's Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate - The Sequel: ENDGAME Extended Addition clawed their way into 3rd place and are within spitting distance of The MidLife Cruxes. And that’s the thing about Team Papa's Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate - The Sequel: ENDGAME Extended Addition. When the going gets tough they just add more phrases onto the end of their team name. The ground we trod upon is just millions upon millions of years of compacted material. And eventually you smoosh it down so much it spurts back up again and this band called Bastille writes a song about it.

3rd place- Team Papa's Climberia: Set Fire to the Seventh Plate - The Sequel: ENDGAME Extended Addition

5th place- The Space Dolphins

7th place- Pyros & Crimps

9th place- Seam Rippers

And I’ll say this about the Seam Rippers, they bit down on 9th place and they are not letting go. If the Rock Lobsters, the Beta Testers, Guajiro’s National Liberation Front, Melissa and the Danimals, Team Fall Risks, OR the Super Villains can supplant them from their tower, I’ll give away a hat I found on a post 6 years ago. And if the Seam Rippers can bump Team Fossil Fuel down to 9th place I’ll give them the self-same hat I mentioned AND a cup I crudely made out of bamboo in June of 2022. Now get over here and hold the light for me while I check the brake calipers.

 And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

"Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door--

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;--

This it is and nothing more.

once again trying to memorize Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

 I attempted this in high school and college halfheartedly but this time we'll really go for it.

I know the start. It goes

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came up a tapping,

as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

Only this. And nothing more."

Ah! How distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly, I wished the morrow--vainly I had sought to borrow

from my books surcease of sorrow--sorrow for the lost Lenore--

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore.

Nameless here for evermore. 

It's kind of harder to type it because I don't know exactly where all the line breaks are and which punctuation he uses where but I can do the first stanza well and today I was working on the second stanza.

Tomorrow I'll try to do the first two stanzas and then work on the third.

Surcease. Great word. Stoppage.

the novemberest of days

 A bias I have is that I remember my childhood as having more ideal seasonal weather. Growing up we had winters where it really snowed and felt like winter. And the Spring time felt like Spring when it was supposed to. And the Fall was as Fall as Fall ever get.

But I gotta say,

Today is an all-time November day.

Grey skies. Beautiful red, yellow, and orange trees. Moderate temperature. Just a dead-on early November type day. 

There's a little ol' critter in me rocking back and forth on its rocking chair on the porch saying to itself "mmm-hmmm. that's real good, november."

they done shut my water off!

 not because I didn't pay my bill or anything

they just shut it off!

I can't wash my hands!

The thing about having my water shut off is that I automatically start to assume I can't do other things that aren't related to water. 

Like I forget that I can still use electricity. 

And use the internet.

And flush the toilet.

ONCE!

Exactly one time.

You can flush the toilet exactly one time.

But yeah.

You can still drink the old cold coffee out of the pot.

Just not shower, make rice or pasta, or wash your hands.

nobody said it was easy

 I won't lie to you

This life ain't easy.

Except for the parts that are wildly easy sometimes.

And then other things that seem like they should be doable--

completely impossible.

So I guess what actually isn't easy

is knowing if things will be easy or not.

Because you really can't argue that at least a few things aren't easy.

Grilled cheeses.

Couldn't be easier.

But I'm lactose intolerant.

Scorned by God then, I suppose.

Retire to your chamber of seclusion

and wax on about sorrows innumerable.

Not me though.

Over here on the couch

eating this banging grilled chee

rainbow kitten unicorn leotard

 this girl came into the gym yesterday hiding behind her mom, she was probably like 4 years old, and she looked upset and her mom explain that at the gymnastics gym across the parking lot where she had just been, she had seen a leotard with rainbow kitten unicorns on it and she really wanted it.

they checked in and before they went up the stairs to the climbing area the girl had to pause and, like an actor giving an especially juicy monologue, say, "BUT I WANT IT! I WANT IT!"

And she kind of threw herself to the ground as if the force with which she wanted this rainbow kitten unicorn leotard was too much for her body to contain.

I used to want things that badly. I remember my dad had to drag me away from a card stand in the mall because I was screaming that I need to buy an Electabuzz Pokemon card with my own money for like thirty dollars and it was such a rip-off that my dad refused to let me buy it. But man did I want it.

It's probably some combination of training self-control and seeing enough things that you lose that all-consuming want but I aspire to want something as bad as this girl wanted this rainbow kitten unicorn leotard

loving the song Fall in Philadelphia by Hall and Oates

 a beautiful lovely song about a terrible time in a terrible place

that's songwriting

that's craftsmanship

you ever just pluck a memory out of your brain

 When I was young I went to this daycare called Minnieland from pre-k to like 3rd grade and on the playground area we had this big house thing made of like plywood. I guess it was technically a small house but in my kid eyes it was a big house. And I remember once that this girl named Katie Crittenden told me that I pushed her out of the window of this house when she was sitting on the windowsill. But I don't remember that. And I didn't remember it at the time. I only have the memory of her telling me that I had done that years before. 

And so maybe that's my first memory of not having a memory. And it was this thing that she very clearly remembered about me and felt the need to tell me about it years later and I had absolutely no memory of it.

Which is kinda monstrous, if you think about it. So I don't know maybe that's what set me straight. No more window pushing for me after that.

Also today during the warm-up at practice someone said, "I've known myself my whole life."

Which I immediately took issue with. You haven't known yourself your whole life. Not even close.

You haven't even begun to know yourself until Katie Crittenden reminds you that you pushed her out of a window one time and you have to reckon with others having a perception of you based on your real words and actions but is, at the same time, entirely removed from your subjective experience. That's knowing yourself.