random thoughts

Vibes

UPDATE, JULY 4, 2022: I am going to periodically update this post with more examples of how "vibes" is being inserted into articles and things where it never would have been before, because it is still the NEW HOT WORD.
Vibes!

The below added July 4, 2022, from an article in The Atlantic. The writer could have written “the economy” but no, we got VIBES happening.

October 26, 2022: YouTube wants me to know it’s refreshed its vibe:

How did “vibes” become the new hot topic (on the web, which is now our replacement for reality, unless your country is being invaded by Russia)? How did this happen? What will replace vibes when vibes are no longer hot?

Am I doing vibes right? What is my vibe? I just don’t know.

Related: When did people decide it was hip to refer to products being offered in different colors as “colorways” when “colors” works just fine?

Why are people so weird?

Also, a fancy cat:

I am tired

I am tired of being a good person (or at least I think I’m a good person) and seemingly being punished for it.

I am tired of being nice with no result, no effect.

I am tired of indifferent and incompetent people.

I am tired of inconsiderate people.

I am tired of people. I am tired of this world.

I am tired.

I am tired.

I am tired.

Draft never posted: Bluh, February 2020 edition

April 5, 2022: As the title suggests, this post was originally written at the start of February 2020--a month prior to the official declaration of the COVID-19 global pandemic, which is still ongoing as I write this update. I haven't edited the entry, but thought it would be interesting to post in a time capsule sort of way.

I mean, February was kind of better. March, though...

I fell well short of my post-per-day goal in January, but I also got a nasty case of the flu (which still lingers on in a few minor ways two weeks after I first got sick). This took what was a minimal desire to write and squashed it like a bug under a very large boot.

It also rained 28 of 31 days in January, so I may have also have been hit by TRD–Torrential Rain Disorder, in which even someone who has lived their entire life in the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island eventually starts cracking from the incessant, endless rain.

But perhaps February will be better. At the very least it will be shorter. And perhaps a smidgen warmer.

Things I wish I had more of

These would be nice, but not essential.

  • Hair. In a way, having a shaved head is nice. It’s very low maintenance. I can’t have bad hair days. But a big, lush head of Robert Plant hair would be nice to tousle in slow motion. Until I had to wash it, and you know, actually take care of it.
  • Money. Would lots of money turn me into an evil, hedonistic monster? I’d be willing to find out.
  • Better taste in clothes. I’m not horrible, but I’m not great, either. I wear (nice) sweatpants with little shame. I can’t see where exactly this would help me, but it seems like something that would be nice to have.
  • Patience. Everyone can always use more of this, right? Not to be confused with the Guns ‘N Roses song, which is okay and does not try my patience.
  • Passion. Passionate people are weird and scare me, yet I long to join their wild-eyed club. My passion is more like a warm bowl of soup. It’s fine, but it doesn’t last and you can only re-heat it so many times before it gets kind of gross.
  • Muscles. Who doesn’t want to be big and brawny? Well, me, actually. But to have nicely-toned muscles, to have a body that makes people notice without immediately thinking, “Loser must live in a gym”? I could handle that. What I can’t handle is the exercise necessary for getting these muscles.
  • More as they cross my mind.

Haiku to aliens silently observing us

scenic view of night sky
Photo by Hristo Fidanov on Pexels.com

Assuming there are a) aliens and b) they find us interesting enough to observe, of course. A haiku, in the form of a gentle plea:

Hello aliens
We're not as dumb as we seem
We need more time, please

This haiku is inspired by:

  • Putin thinking it was smart to invade Ukraine
  • People who cry about losing freedom because they have to wear a mask sometimes during a global pandemic
  • Global warming made a lot worse by guess who!
  • The general decline in rational thought, reason, compassion and what passes for common sense

Sometimes I think, “Wouldn’t it be neat to have a glimpse 100 years into the future, to see what wondrous technologies are yet to come?” but these days I’m more likely to pass on such an idea because I feel that future glimpse would reveal a world in which we (humans) are either gone or set back a thousand years or so in terms of technology due to our inability to stop fighting/killing each other and being so selfish and short-sighted about everything and anything. Sure, social media (nominated for Top Scourge of the 21st Century by me) amplifies all of this and perhaps makes it seem so much worse than it might really be, but I still find myself sighing over how often I see people being so casually thoughtless and uncaring. It feels like the glue that holds us together is wearing thin and everyone is moving toward looking out for #1, which will probably lead to our eventual doom.

Or maybe we will have flying cars and baby machines. Who can say? It’s easy to focus on the negative, so let me try one more haiku:

Hello aliens
We are a work in progress
Please do not blast us

There, a wee bit more positive, woo.

I started a newsletter

No, I don’t know why. But I can explain how I got here:

  1. I decided I wanted to move away from Gmail for [reasons]
  2. I began searching for other email services
  3. I initially settled on Outlook.com because I already had a subscription to Office Microsoft 365, anyway
  4. Outlook.com is mostly fine but doesn’t really do anything new with email, and the UI is bland and boring. I began looking again.
  5. I settled on trying out HEY email. Yes, they like you to spell it all shouty like that. HEY got me a new email address and I like the way it looks. It does a few things differently and while I’m not yet convinced I’ll stay with it long term, it’s a fine second email service for me to play around with.
  6. HEY offers something called HEY World, which lets you write an email that gets posted to your own custom mini-blog. Mine is here: https://world.hey.com/stan.james
  7. Two friends humored me and subscribed, but the whole thing is pretty basic. But it gave me a taste of something different, and eventually I wanted more.
  8. Today is also the day that Austin Kleon moved his weekly newsletter to Substack. I read several other Substack-hosted newsletters and began mulling moving my random thoughts from HEY World to Substack, where I can experiment and be weird on the internet.

Which brings me to my Substack newsletter, cleverly titled Stan’s Random Newsletter. You can see it here: https://stanjames.substack.com/ (I also have a handy link on the right sidebar of this blog.)

Can I just keep posting random nonsense here on my blog? Yes! Will I continue doing so? Yes! So why use Substack? Because there’s something about a newsletter that’s different, even if it’s simply the convenience of sending the random thoughts directly to someone via email. If they like the random thoughts, they can get more without doing anything. No websites to remember, no fuss, no muss (what is muss, anyway?)

I have no idea how long I’ll keep this up or what will come of it, but I’ll play around with it for a while and see where it goes. I’ll start by padding it out with some of my HEY World posts, because a smart author knows how to utilize existing resources. Or something.

A case of the blahs

Hard to explain. Could it be…

  • Uncertainty about the future
  • Global warming (sort of related to the above)
  • General sense of flabbiness
  • Something intangible and unknowable
  • The fact that the Styx album Kilroy Was Here really got made

I’m listening to “Mr. Roboto” right now, and I’m leaning toward the last one. I loved this album when it came out in 1983. I was 19 years old at the time. I present this as my only defense. Well, that and being a sucker for concept albums, apparently even bad ones.

My mind is blank

Yep, it is. I am in one of those weird phases where the more I try to think of something to write, the more the thoughts find ways to squirm out of my head and fly away, never to be seen again. Or maybe they just splat against the nearest window.

So when in doubt, let’s list1I like lists!

The Five Best Colors in the World According to Me

  • Dark pink
  • Red
  • Dark blue
  • Verdant green
  • Black. It’s not a color, but it’s so handy. And black.

Three articles of clothing I will likely never wear

  • A speedo
  • A kilt
  • A burlap sack

Perks of working in IT Support

  • lol
  • lol
  • Seriously, lol

Ways to Make the World a Better Place

  • Ride your bike
  • Grow some veggies
  • Be nice to others. Not super stupid nice, just reasonably nice and pleasant.
  • Eliminate all management
  • Probably need to do something about capitalism, too