The new Martenblog system is in place. Rejoice. I’ve swiped the subject of this entry from the Peter Blegvad song dribbling from my immaculately white studio monitors. We all know the name of the specific song, so I shan’t go into details. The point now is to test an EDIT of an entry.

I’m in Ruidoso with my parents once again, at the Inn of the Mountain Gods. I’ve perused the area for a while and haven’t seen a sign of any actual Gods. However, they may be in a form that is not obvious to me. For example, they may be some of the duck-like creatures floating on the lake, waiting to smite anyone who gives them a passing, peculiar glance. I say so because I’ve heard that Gods are arbitrarily wrathful. Or, they may be one of the multitudinous microbes that infest the mouth of a screaming infant in one of the rooms of the Inn. Perhaps microbes can also be wrathful and smite the owners of said infant, or even the infant itself. Call me a ruffian, but at the least I’m honest in saying that I’m no fan of infants. I understand their purpose, of course, but it tries my tolerance to be around them. Ah well.

Speaking (or typing, or musing, or blathering in either spoken or typewritten form) of microbes, lots of people seem to be discussing them these days. The vast majority of these blatherers have acquired the information they blather about not from any sort of rigid and systematic study, but from hearsay or aggregators. That’s all I have to say (or type, or muse or blather in either spoken or typewritten form) about the subject.

I began this blog entry by stating that I am in Ruidoso with my parents once again. This is a fact. Or it is a fact in this specific infinity of quantum universes. The purpose of the entry is to discuss my parents and their relation, as I see it, to the modern world. So I’ll get with it.

In many respects, I think they are lost. I think of the stereotype that states that one begins a regression towards infancy as old age progresses. I think this stereotype applies to an extent. However, I’ve observed that the actual point of regression oscillates wildly between the 1950s and 1980s.

My father was born in 1938 and my mother in 1942, putting them in their teens in the 1950s. Stereotypically (again), many people return to this epoch of their life, airbrushing it into the so-called golden years. My father is one of these many people. In the 80s, my brother and I were youth and did the bidding of my parents, travelled with them and were basically under their (far too controlling, in my opinion) eye. Up to this decade, they were able to adapt to the changing landscape of the world. They did not have difficulties moving from village to city and back again, and though they preferred the tranquil and gossipy life of the former, the latter did not rattle them as it does now.

Now I cannot imagine either of them coping in a place like Austin, or even Lubbock. Though it’s true that Austin was somewhat smaller in the 80s, the main issue I sense is an intolerance from age. As time passed, they gradually lost their adaptability. I watch them struggle with interaction even with the waitress at the restaurant here at the Inn. One could also claim generation gap (in their case, multiple generations), but I don’t think generation gap is the base reason. My father seems to interact with the people around him as if they understand the mannerisms of a bygone epoch. Yeah - the 1950s.

They, themselves - especially my mother - are not blind to this drift to the past. During a ride around town (meaning a ride along the twisty roads consisting of the scattered outskirts, among farms and mini-ranches), she lamented that my father was somewhat trapped in a sentimental bog form from an idealised (my word) adolescence. In fact, one of the main reasons they moved from Fort Stockton to Seminole was because he grew up here. He was convinced that he’d start seeing his old friends again, even reconnect with high school ex-girlfriends. Of course, sixty years on, those people, and yes, some still lived in Seminole, had created vastly different lives. I’ve never talked directly to my father about it, but I can imagine he was bitterly disappointed.

I imagine that it’s not uncommon to want to migrate from the speed of city life to a place with a more comfortable pace as one ages. Or, at least I can imagine it for some types of personalities. However, for my parents, it is extreme. Anything out of the realm of small town bustle is much too fast for them. In contrast, their patience has decreased exponentially. (Not that my father was EVER patient.) Again, I’ll go with the restaurant example. Big city restaurants (let’s pretend that Ruidoso is a big city for a moment) make one WAIT for service. To me, this is natural. To them, and especially after Covid lockdowns making restaurant visits even in Seminole more infrequent, service should be provided immediately after they sit down. The food should come a few minutes later. After all, they are the only ones in the restaurant, right?

This is not an exaggeration. Especially for my father, any sort of waiting is intolerable. This phenomenon of getting to the next thing as quickly as possible makes little sense to me. I’ve seen him savour the moment when playing a game (cribbage?), for example, or sitting in front of a slot machine (but only whilst winning), but this feature of his personality doesn’t extend past those and a few other activities. Everything else is rush to get on with the next timeslotted item. The paradox is grotesque. Retire from a bustle to begin a new type of bustle to get to where? Death?

No thanks, vole.

Though I ignore it as much as possible, I am at times hit in the face (or thorax, or abdomen) by the naked capitalistic greed of the country in which I currently reside. My glorious mobile service provider, AT&T, is going through a cessation stage for what they term as incompatible phones. What is an incompatible phone, you may ask? Well, my Fairphone 3, for one. Any phone that is not either bought blatantly with a Jaundiced Orchestration of Corporate Kibble (furthermore abbreviated to JOCK) or somehow registered as a phone subsumed by AT&T during JOCK processing is phased out. So the limp and brusque of it is that I had to purchase a new phone that corresponds to my JOCK yesterday.

Advantages do exist, of course, including the orifice melting speed of 5G, but one has to augment one’s JOCK to have the ability to tether to one’s phone or create a hotspot. Huh? I’m used to life in Europe. I had a phone. I put a sim card into it. That sim card was tied to some more nominally capitalistic enterprise. I could then do whatever I wanted with said phone, including simple things like tethering and creating a hotspot.

It seems the base JOCK is just that: as little as the service provider can provide and still call it a service. Everything else is extra.

When little (I laughingly dub it little) annoyances like this rear their noggins, I try desperately to hold to positivity. For now, I must remain in the good ol’ USA. Fuck um.

My ears are ringing, exacerbated by an unknown illness that has occupied my body for the last six days. Is it receding? I hope so, because along for a ride with it is a depression that is not quite crippling psychologically, but close enough to be a consistent itch. Do I like itches? I do not like itches.

The funk has not prevented me from composing, however. That being written, the newest piece, at first designed to be part of the Naviar Haiku challenge, is strangely lacklustre. Many ideas lounge about its corridors, but, though they share many roots, do not intertwine to my satisfaction. My current view is that it’ll remain as is or very similar, be “released” as the next Naviar Haiku challenge and then returned to during a future epoch for revision. Of course, future epochs are fickle as to whether they even choose to arrive. Bastard chunks of arbitrary time.

I’ve been listening to Thelonious Monk repeatedly of late. Corollarily, I’ve begun to practise some of his pieces on guitar. I laughingly say practise. I go over the chord progression of Ask Me Now every day in various permutations, mostly using it as a basis for arpeggio studies. I like the constant return to Ebm7 / Ab7 / Dmaj7 (yeah - ii V I) after the fun, descending minor / tritone-sub 7 sequences. The B7lyd (which is what I call a lydian dominant chord) to Bb7 that sets up the aforementioned ii V I, which is really just another ii V I, albeit a minor one resolving to Ebm7 and having B7lyd substitute for Fm7. In fact, I just put the tune on now (from Solo Monk). Everyone is welcome to whip out their axe-flute, mandolin, jaw-harp, femur-whistle and 80s Casio keyboard to vamp along. Ready? Kar, Tir, Taf, Jen, GO!

I sip coffee and pause from writing at the moment to place my two newest improvisations onto Funkwhale, both of which involve experimentation with my newest pedal, the Pladask Elektrisk Baklengs. I encourage everyone to acquire and / or purloin one, being a granular synthesizer with highly interactive controls.

=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org Oh, the funk!

Accomplished. They are, as someone in the aether says, live.

=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org/library/tracks/1904/ Globular Cluster Blues

=> https://funkwhale.thurk.org/library/tracks/1903/ Preparar un Bizcocho para el Último Orintorrinco

I’m unsure of the origin of the funk. That sentence was the one that sprang to mind to begin this paragraph. Whence it sprang, I do not know, though I suspect from some “automated” part of my mind that enjoys beginning paragraphs with untruths. I know exactly the origin, or, actually, multiple origins of my funk, or shall I call it what it really is: minor depression. One of the origins is from consuming alcohol constantly for circa 36 hours last week. Just about this very time last week, in fact! The physical hangover was not particularly bad, but I contracted an advanced form of the sniffles during the physical low which resulted, and those sniffles have not yet left my fleshy bodice. Any sort of illness “helps” depression along, of course, and by “helps” i mean exacerbates it.

However, flashes of happiness, or perhaps contentment, especially whilst working on the aforementioned music have indicated that the sniffles (and therefore depression) are receding.

Other origins include dealing with my parents, and especially my father, on a daily basis. It is exasperating work. It is draining work. By the end of each day, my thoughts are blurry and subdued. Thus, early, like at this very moment, is the time where I can create, be in writing or music. The last weeks have seen woefully little of the former!

And yet other origins are the abandonment of my former life in Logroño, but I have already written about that extensively.

I drive the aforementioned father to Midland for medical reasons today. Big fun. A goal is to try to get some Monk practise in before the journey.

Wish me huck. Yes - huck.

The last two days, and including this morning, I have a marked lack of energy, both psychologically and physically. I presume the culprit is the wasting illness that has plagued me for several centuries. It’s a wonder that there are any cells left in me. I should be a grey wraith wandering in Pagan Park. Perhaps I am and thus hallucinating my current life, including typing on a laptop I named Pennanti. The fate wouldn’t be so bad, in fact.

Regaining semblance of energy today will involve imbibing commodious containers filled with various caffeinated beverages. It will also involve receiving my Argon8 synthesizer. I shall be so invigorated that I’ll not sleep again for centuries and the so-call wasting disease will be a thing of the distant past.

Which brings me to an only distantly related topic.

I’ve posited that in a time of extended sensory denial, the mind will create its own universe in which to live. The phenomenon may also happen at the brink of death or during the process of dying itself. And, like dreams are rarely cognizant of the way time passes in the real world, the process could involve experiencing a whole separate (but not quite completely separate) lifetime.

So, possibly in the real world, I am in a sensory deprivation chamber, or even have had my brain removed completely. Without sensory apparati attached to the brain, the result is the same. The universe I have concocted includes me typing on Pennanti. Oh, what solipsism!

But it doesn’t have to be complete solipsism. Each subsequent universe the brain creates, and universes within universes created by the created brain / mind again either in some state of sensory deprivation or in the process of dying, could be a modified form of the original universe I have lived (or am currently living - in a state of sensory deprivation or in the process of dying) through. Therefore, a sense of deja vu and even previous lives is intact. The creatures and objects I interact with are eidolons of the ones who originally shaped me. It is a re-experiencing of the initial course of my life, and variations on it.

Well, isn’t that grand!

Accumulating music equipment is may way of subconsciously telling myself that I’ll be in the states a while. A Modal Argon8 is on the way, as well as a Subdelay phaser. I spend a small chunk of each day researching ways to expand my sound, which involves sitting in front of the computer watching videos on Youtube. I much prefer reading technical reviews, as I can go through them at my own pace. Videos force you into the pacing of their author. Video producers, no matter their intention, are a type of conductor. You must settle into their rhythm or simply abandon it.

Back to the accumulation: As I mentioned recently, the sensation and method is similar to my first forays into guitar sound sculpting, during which I was buying, reselling and trading pedals at a pace that would snap a stick figure back into its component parts. It excites me! And why shouldn’t it? I must be careful, however, to not let the fascination for acquisition of new hardware overtake the love for making music itself.

This sort of excitement for materialism is common. I’ve looked it directly in its cyclops eye many times in my life. One that springs to mind is whilst hanging out with Tomaš (Doot) in the winter 1998-1999. Oh yes, the very earliest of Praha-times. He posited that acquiring hi-fi equipment to blast punk music on was the ideal solution for heartbreak. He was trying to help his semi-depressed acquaintance, of course, and offered his method. It as a method that many men use. Yes, I’ll stereotype and say men here. I may be partially using it at this very moment, in fact, though apart from pangs that hit me at arbitrary moments during the day, I’m mostly through the longing for my place and life in Logroño - especially when I pause the chemical whorl of emotion and perceive my situation (and its contrasting past situation(s)) logically.

I pause to install a Neovim Lsp (Language Server Protocol) for Markdown. Yes! Another distraction. I’m full of um these days. I’ll follow up on that thought in a bit.

And TailwindCss is now thurking my markdown. It was already installed, actually, as it is (obviously by its title) the LSP for CSS (and Less, Sass, etc) and unfortunate me has to deal with stylesheets often. I simply had to place a certain file in the base Martenblog directory to let TailwindCss know to activate itself. Oh, happy me. It’s giving me quite a number of completions, as well, or is that nvim-cmp? Who knows? The whole Neovim setup process is partially still a mystery, which leads me to the topic of distractions.

I find myself wandering in circles, as it were, quite a bit these days. I place too many tasks within my mental agenda each morning and somehow get few of them completed to my liking. This contrasts sharply the way I lived in Logroño. I never rushed through my days. I placed practise time at a priority, but I knew that I would get there eventually, and if not, at least improve my playing greatly on the way. Seminole has an haze of stress that lingers. Do I feel like I’m aging too rapidly? I am not sure. Maybe. I don’t want to waste a modicum of my working hours. I find myself getting impatient with my mother when she constantly interrupts me whether I’m programming, practising or composing. I feel bad for her and am not happy with my reactions.

Adopting my Logroño attitude once again is a goal. Making some sort of task list would help, but not one with deadlines. Simply having the list would be beneficial as I could see my plodding progress. I shall begin now.

Daily

• Guitar practise from the book: attempt one hour and a half
• Current piece: just always get a few things added for the next morning’s analysis
• Experiment with new equipment: Do a short improv?

Weekly

• Elixir / Erlang: learn something
• Elixir: start rewriting the vDNA polling apparatus using Postgresql (& Ecto - much to learn there)
• Supercollider: stick with the videos. Experiment and improve. An eventual objecting is a complete piece in Supercollider

As a start, that is ok. It’ll be easier to accomplish the daily goals because they are more present. Weekly is harder since time is diffuse. Perhaps an after-the-fact bullet journal can come into play. I used to take notes of my daily activity, what all occurred to me, every evening. That is a slightly different methodology, but I should do BOTH. In my handwritten journal, I’ll scribe what I’ve accomplished each evening. I’ll also scribe instants that made impressions on my throughout the day.

I have made my organisational beginning. A new one! At last. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Oh, and every morning, type something into this grey box that some call Neovim. Any and all blather can be seed for future Martenblog entries.

Scott Walker’s Bolivia drones from my telephone to my left. I’m sitting up in my bed typing at 5.38. Upon awakening, I scrolled through my feed on Mastodon, came upon a toot mentioning @mailtape@masto.mtcrew.org, so I put their newest collection on. The music was selected by both the Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti and by the Mailtape crew themselves. So far so good! It’s yet another way to discover new music. Apart from the Scott Walker track, none of the other music is familiar.

So, I’m sitting up typing at 5.42. A routine has set in and, as it was in Logroño and even partially in Praha, it affects my perception of time. Yes - the feeling of time rushing! I dislike it and even though I get montones of things accomplished each day, by each evening everything seems a blur.

The only way I knew to break up this meta-monotony before was filling my lifestyle with chaos. If every hour brings a shock, a surprise or a goat headed into the void, time stands still. My mind sticks at each moment. The strategy of chaos will not work if I follow regular walks in the morning, guitar practise, debugging vDNA, Cribbage with dad, composition and refinement of a current piece, etc - the same each day. Is there a middle path? If so, I am unable to come up with it at the moment.

I already feel the weight of Seminole and its small town circle running monotony. I’m sure it contributes to my perception that time accelerates as well as the aforementioned routine. My objective is to get out as soon as possible. Soon is relative, of course. Ruidoso is my immediate goal. Ruidoso or thereabouts. A trip to Praha is in order, also, by or around the end of the year.

Seminole is also devoid of friendships. I shall write Sandy a message after I thurk this paragraph asking when she’d like to have dinner. Nothing contra my parents, but I need to communicate in person with other people from time to time. Communication via internet is also vital but somehow insufficient if it is the only conduit during vast spans of time, or apparently even throughout three weeks. The gaze of another human onto my form’s fleshy bulk refreshes my psyche from time to time. I am still an introvert, por supuesto, but not quite a hermit.

Not yet.

I started an idioms Lakife page - gemini://thurk.org/lakife/idioms.gmi - though there is only one idiom there currently, one that I created yesterday. Behold:

• I’m going down in a blaze of glory.
• Et mifek tul li jezor kez pelis nulu.
• I’m going downwards similarly (as) a goat towards the void.

As I walk each morning in Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas, I’ve been jotting down into Joplin snippets that spontaneously appear in my mind. This I do during each morning’s journey. I laughingly call it a “journey”! These jottings could be thought of as aphorisms. At least some of them could be thought of as aphorisms. Now that the word aphorisms appears in writing, or rather in font, I ask myself why an aphorism is an entity I instinctively find more important than an observation. The brief phrases I type into Joplin each morning are mere observations. Aphorism and observation are simply labels. The opinion that one label, because of its uppity associations, has a higher aesthetic value than another isn’t essential at all. In fact, I have no idea why I’m writing about it. Fuck um.

But to linger a moment - obsessive-compulsive wordsmithery reminds me of the conversation I had with Christián the other day. He was buggered by my use of the word thusly in a blog entry. He had learned, or spotted, or imbibed that thusly was not a word at all. Upon investigation, he found it was indeed regarded as a superfluous word by many. Me? I don’t mind. I’ll use it if its sonority in my mind fits with a phrase. Christián, however, had to investigate, as the conundrum of thusly from his past niggled at his cerebrum. Perhaps I was exhibiting a portion of this sort of obsessive-compulsive behaviour, as well, during the previous paragraph!

But -

As I walk each morning in Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas, I jot down into Joplin snippets that appear in my bleary brain. They are either observations of the environment around me, including other humans behaviours, or extrapolations in my mind concerning minutiae surrounding me. Some of these are imaginative and allegorical. Whatever their nature, they all improve my already light mood. I always have a certain light mood when I’m bleary and simultaneously strolling.

My intention is to have Tim recite the observations in his eloquent voice. I shall scatter them throughout the album I’m basing on the Morning Ambience recordings from June of this year. Aunque - the observation I want to discuss in this Martenblog entry is one that has little to do with observations within Pagan Park, Seminole, Texas. It is this:

Folk musics, or, rather, musics rooted in a singular cultural style, convey the sensation of remaining in a single place. Hybrid musics, in contrast, convey the sensation of a journey from place to place and not necessarily in the end returning to the point of origin.

For me, folk musics exist in bubbles. They certainly are appreciated outside of their bubble, but most of the actual development goes on within the bubble. By bubble here I mean cultural bubble. A cultural bubble doesn’t have to reside in a singular physical location. Its hollow tentacles can reach out amid the galaxy. But the fundamental, or beating heart of the bubble is rooted in one place. In this manner, folk musics remind me of centralised networks - or single server architecture - where all information passes through a core intelligence. Christian’s sacred Flamenco, produced in Cadiz or at the tip of a tentacle in Nuuk, will be filtered through the central server that is Andalucía.

Perhaps I am incorrect in stating that folk musics must have their server situated in a particular physical location. When Andalucía is an uninhabitable crust of parched and cracked hardpan, a forecast quickly rushing at it, the spirit of Flamenco, or, to keep with the nomenclature, its server will remain in virtual space - meaning within the many minds of its practitioners and aficionados. But the idea remains. Every falseta will be filtered through the server.

In contrast, hybrid musics are a cross cultural phenomenon. They are interbubble. They create their own meta-bubble and they exist as a distributed system, much like a peer to peer network. Informed by not only multiple folk musics, but by concepts outside of music altogether, a single server filtration system is too genre-focused for them. This is the reason they evoke a feeling of travel - of a sojourn. They gradually or rapidly pass through mores and meme-pools, wading and pondering some and sweeping through others.

One can opine that these hybrid musics only superficially skim over various cultural ideas, merely dipping their beaks briefly through the skin of various folk bubbles. Much like my ideas of politics and religion - that is, to take the bits that interest me from each flavour and discard the rest - hybrid musics do much the same. Sampling the single server rooted musics of the galaxy to combine them with ideas outside of traditional musics is the objective. The aim is to build something satisfying and new. Each composition isn’t necessarily a restructuring of a core idea or even a companion to other compositions within the same meta-bubble. They are journeys through the skein of consciousness collected from myriad sources.

I am perpetually reminded of something Mr Bender once said to me, simplifying life to a dichotomy, but still in a manner that resonates. He said that there must be people who stay in the villages they grew up in. They are there to continue its culture, it’s heritage, it’s bubble, if you will. They are the folk musics. Others will come from the outside to reside with them and learn their ways, of course, but they’ll never be the majority.

In contrast, there are the ones who leave, the ones who journey and live within multitudinous other cultures and eventually make their own. They are the hybrid musics. Their sojourn is usually fraught with difficulty because they don’t have the infrastructure the folkies have. Their support group is nothing more than the experience and exploration of the new and of their own imagination. Perseverance most usually results in beauty, however, or hideousness alike - depending on what one prefers.

I was going over in my mind whether it was important to share similar taste in Music and Art during a relationship. I suspect that it’s not a problem for most relationships, though when one of the participants of said relationship is passionate about particular arts or musics, it is a problem.

Creating art or music is a deeply personal pursuit and lack of appreciation from a partner, even if said partner is supportive of the activity (as Marisa was), can debilitate the whole partnership, creating a silently widening rift. It happened with Marisa and myself. Well, it was one of the factors that led to my leaving. The rift widened over time into a ravine and then bottomless gulf. On one edge I stood with my music. On the opposite edge, she stood, not interested in listening.

Understanding another’s artistic objectives is essential. Sitting with the art and pondering it is essential. This I say in the context of marriage, long term partnerships in general, and any sort of relationship where two humans are cohabitants, sharing significant blocks of time together.

It’s 6.26. I shall carry on with my typical morning routine (of these bleary times). I crawl to the kitchen, psychokinetically peel, de-seed and chop up half an avocado. Continuing during the few morning minutes during which I am a psychokinetic variety of creature, my mind opens a jar of Kalamata olives, a packet of cherry tomatoes and a tub of leafy spinach. They are sliced as if in a universe of knives too thin and sharp to be seen with human vision. The spinach seems to shred itself. All mixes together in an ever-patient porcelain salad bowl.

My psychokinesis wanes but I need not worry. The bottles of olive oil and Balsamic Vinegar (of which I only partake a few drops at a time) float out of the cupboard by their own accord. They are brilliant motile creatures, much like the erstwhile Shambal Brambel, who is now sadly sessile - rooted within a dome built from blocks of sod at the center of a wasteland marked by ever widening concentric circles. The bottles drift to the bowl into which my previously taut mind placed the vegetable and fruits. They pour themselves of the correct quantities into the bowl, which itself begins to vibrate and heave, mixing the contents within as flax seed appears out of aether and sprinkles itself upon the undulating vegetable and fruits.

Unseen by me, a pan has come to sit on a burner, filled sparsely with coriander and cumin seeds. A glop of olive oil seeps among the seeds, ostensibly from the very same motile bottle mentioned in the previous paragraph, as Portobello mushrooms rush from the gaping refrigerator, self-slicing during transit - in the kitchen’s airy space - and landing in the pan, in which the coriander and cumin have begun to sizzle.

A pair of emus named Vlad and Michaela prance from a darkened tunnel leading from either the void or Australia. With prosthetic pincers, they offer a precious egg, apparently just laid. Instead of taking it myself, I continue splayed on the floor to where I originally crawled as Vlad cracks the beastly, ovoid thing and lets its contents run into the pan. Pincers become spatula-like appendages and proceed to whip the eggs with the seeds and mushrooms. Machaela eructs a breath of salt that settles into the concoction.

The two retreat back to the tunnel that leads either to Australia or the void as I finally rise. The smell is enormous. Using my own limbs which are not yet prosthetic, nor pincers, nor spatula-like appendages, I empty the pan into a plate that was conveniently placed in the place where plates ought to be. I carry both vessels to a breakfast bar, at which I feast for centuries.

Thusly the morning routine concludes.

(The first draft of this was written 2021-01-27)

So, along with the current daily tea, which happens to be English Breakfast these days, I’ve selected Popol Vuh’s Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte as this morning’s writing music. I’ve had this album sitting around on one hard drive or another since the mid ’00s. I’ve never once sat and listened to it actively. In fact, the only album that I’ve listened to actively by Popol Vuh is In Den Garten Pharoas, which is incredibly different in style than this one. A good question is whether I’ll actually, at any point in my future, listen to Letzte Tage - Letzte Nächte actively. I’d say the probability is between 15 and 20 percent. So, Herr Florian Fricke, you’ll probably be saddened to hear such a declaration. Being that you are a corpse, however, you may be well acquainted with the expression Fuck Um.

As I was preparing the aforementioned English Breakfast tea, I was thinking about the conversation I had with the narcissist asshole Christian Newman yesterday. Well, it wasn’t so much of a conversation but I declaration of my own whilst he wallowed within his own inner dialog. I shouldn’t be so hard on him, actually, concerning the inner dialog problem that has plagued him throughout his existence. He’s kept it under control, at least whilst conversing with me. Or at least whilst conversing with me lately. No such thing can be said about our other narcissist asshole, James Csaszar. Anyhow, back to the topic at hand. I was “conversing” with Christian yesterday and eructed the following paragraph into Telegram for him:

I find it amusing, or to you what you’d probably say - “meta-amusing” - that bubble-thinking people often will go to great lengths to share what they find as humorous to EVERYONE around them. I’m not accusing you of this, so don’t be an ego-centric asshole. I am just reminded of the phenomenon. Anyway - they’ll demonstrate something they find hilarious. If YOU don’t find it hilarious or even AS hilarious as they do, they’ll claim that you don’t UNDERSTAND the humour, especially if it is from a culture that is not of your particular origin. NOW - that’s pretentious and condescending, actually. YOU UNDERSTAND IT FINE. YOU JUST DON’T THINK IT IS FUNNY, OR AS FUNNY.

To be more general, I think most people choose what to believe. If some Spanish narcissist asshole decides to show me a video that is steeped in Spanish cultural humour and I don’t find it amusing, usually said Spanish narcissist asshole will label me as someone who just doesn’t understand Spanish humour. This was equally evident when I lived in the Czech Republic and Czech narcissist assholes would do the same. Even more ironic is that said Czech narcissist asshole would go on to explain that Czech humor is very dark and since I’ve lived a different kind of life, I wouldn’t get it. What pretentious nonsense!

So, continuing to be more general, I think most people choose what to believe. But they don’t necessarily to do consciously. A defense mechanism is in place to reject criticism. If I don’t find someone’s humour funny or I don’t find someone’s taste in music aligned with my own, it’s not that I don’t understand the humour or music. It’s simply because I don’t like it. Or, to be diplomatic, it doesn’t toot my muffin the same way that it toots the narcissist asshole’s muffin.

That being said, there are times when a narcissist asshole can be correct. A humorous video, a song, a poem, a film, a book, or the etchings on the skeleton of a Byzantine prostitute can be so steeped in a certain cultural more that it is impossible to get without sufficient knowledge of the context. Christian (a self-admitted narcissist asshole) had shown me a video of an Andalucian yodeler satirising about homeless beggars instead of lamenting lost love or spiritual decay poetically. Though the idea appeals to me, as does much satire, I found the manner in which it was executed crude. Thus, it did not humour me. I GOT it, but I didn’t think it was especially funny. I opened this paragraph by stating the opposite of what this example represents. It is true I may have found it slightly more funny were I to live in Andalucía and experience the daily shamblings and mumblings of the homeless there, but the crudeness of expression that did not jive with my taste in humour would still prevent me from chuckling with the same fervour as Herr Narcissist Asshole Christian.

I think most people choose what to believe. I’m sure a reader with an adroit mind can extrapolate this idea to current social and political situations. I personally shall not. I’m more interested in the phenomenon as an abstract living strategy. When someone, be it a narcissist asshole or not, chooses what to believe consciously, I’m convinced that it can story said narcissist asshole’s life from then on. The effects of the choice can weigh on the people around in different ways. This touches on my idea of fundamentalism, as well. My view is that someone can choose whatever they want to believe and I’ll have no problem with it unless they try to force this belief onto me or onto others around me during the multitudinous social occasions I attend. This is the evangelistic facet of my idea of fundamentalism. I don’t groove with it.

When I muse over what to choose to believe, I am usually musing over ideas that will not wrap groups of people in virtual fences or build virtual walls between groups or even individuals. I choose to believe in the Heat Death of the Universe or the Many Worlds or Many Minds theories. I can do this and explore my own inner world in the context of these ideas. I choose to believe in certain aspects of Taoist philosophy and certain aspects of Communist philosophy. I explore my own inner world in the context of these ideas.

My thoughts drift now to pigeonholing. I sat down on our balcony the other day and, of course, the three generations of women there were talking about politics. Kind of. I claimed that I agreed with parts of communist philosophy, but not with anything and certainly not with much of the implementation. María, another narcissist asshole, immediately tried to pigeonhole me and immediately started talking over me (in that uniquely Mediterranean manner) and asking me if the actions of - insert arbitrary Spanish communist figure here - were fair to - insert arbitrary group of Spanish peasants here - during - insert arbitrary time period in recent Spanish history here. I get it - most people need simple archetypes to be able to think clearly. Most people need to categorise everyone around them into one of these simple archetypes. I calmly explained to María, after I duct-taped her hands, feet and mouth and sequestered her to a damp cellar in Manchuria for several months, that I don’t subscribe to any particular political position or political philosophy. When I have time, I read and inform myself about certain things and take the bits I find fascinating, interesting or telltale and consider, but ultimately discard the rest.

I choose to believe that narcissist, pigeonholing assholes should indeed be duct-taped and sequestered to damp cellars in Manchuria. Fuck um.