random thoughts

At the time of writing this post, of course. Presumably, both numbers will continue to go up.

I saw a mention of the song on the interweb, so checked out the video again. The video is fine–I like the colour and lighting, and Thom Yorke looks appropriately weird. The song is one of those quiet-LOUD-quiet numbers that is predictable, but extremely well-executed. I can see why it has so many views.

But 202,075 comments. An average novel is around 80,000-100,000 words. Even if every comment was a single word, that’s more than double the word count of an average novel. That is a lot of words.

It makes me wonder how long it would take to read every comment. It makes me wonder if anyone has tried. And what they felt when they were done, assuming they were still conscious.

Also, here is the video in question:

Trees don’t make you feel anxious or full of existential dread.

I mean, unless it’s stormy and one looks like it’s going to fall on you, which has admittedly happened to me.

But in general, trees don’t do that and I like that about them.

THIS POST IS COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO CURRENT WORLD EVENTS¹Haha, naw. It’s totally related to it. But I am actually doing fine, here with my trees and nature and such..

Or even just the last month. Or today!

I saw this, uncredited, on Mastodon. On the one hand, it’s kind of trite. On the other, I like the actual colour and composition of the photograph and agree with the sentiment. It seems so much of our world is built around competition and while competition is not bad in itself, it perhaps shapes too much of what we do in our society, and encourages a kind of selfishness that isolates us from each other.

Anyway, that’s my deep thought for the morning!

We’ve gone through one box and are working on the second. They’re small, sweet and juicy. No seeds, no weirdness, what’s not to like?

Probably the best thing about December.

I haven’t tried any eggnog yet. I’m not sure how it will hold up. It’s kind of the anti-Mandarin orange, in a way.

I don’t actually have a follow-up on this, it just felt like a catchy thing to say.

But if I was trying to boil it down into something meaningful, it would be something like this: If you really believed in something and it turned out to not just be wrong, but very wrong, don’t beat yourself up over it, just acknowledge it, learn from it, and move on.

It’s kind of fortune cookie wisdom, but it’s mid-week and my watch told me I’d have a harder time thinking today, so that’s what you get.

But also this artsy black and white photo of my feet next to a pipe by the river edge as a bonus:

This means we are very near to The Great Confluence of Halloween and Christmas Candy on store shelves. Exciting times.

That means everyone in Discord is sharing YouTube clips that look like this to me:

It’s okay, though, the Olympics (in Paris right now as I type this) are yet another major cultural thing I just don’t have interest in any longer. It’s weird, because I don’t know why this changed. I used to watch and even get excited in anticipation of the Oscar broadcast. Now I often struggle to remember the last film to win Best Picture (I do remember this time–it was Oppenheimer, which, like most movies, I haven’t seen. The last movie I watched in a theatre was Pixar’s perfectly fine Onward, in March 2020). In fact, the full list of things that once engaged me that no longer does is both extensive and maybe a little unnerving, because I really don’t know what has changed.

The drop-off in reading has actually kind of disappointed me. It turns out a long commute was really important to enforcing a good reading habit.

On the plus side, I have spent more time doing other things that are engaging or even healthy, like running and drawing. I guess it all balances out.

This concludes my Monday Semi-deep Thought™.