Author: STEVEN SWANSON

Animal Farm and The First Presidential Debate, Napoleon v. Snowball

Well…

Last night I attended the Davidson County Democratic Watch Party for the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

I was inspired to attend this watch party due to my recent reading of Animal Farm, and I told every person who I chatted with at the party that Animal Farm was the reason why I was there. After the debate I was chatting with Aaron, from Cincinnati, Ohio, who had spent 30 years in Miami and was now here in Nashville, and I mentioned to him as we were talking, “I’m here because I read Animal Farm. Have you read it?” And he said, quoting the book, “Sure. ‘All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.'” Later, reflecting on our conversation and the night in general, I remembered that, and then it made sense why we had clicked so well. I had interesting discussions with Aaron, with Dylan, with a Canadian from Alberta, who said that Alberta was like the Texas of Canada, conservative, oil country and cattle raising. All three of these guys impressed me with their political knowledge, and it was interesting to hear their ideas and their take on things.

It can be hard to talk about politics. Many people are immediately set on edge, triggered, when they hear the now loaded words Democrat or Republican. Democrats are triggered by the word Republican, and Republicans are triggered by the word Democrat. I don’t want to get wrapped up in factionalism, tribalism, whatever you want to call it. I want to stay out. So even though I was at a Democratic convention, I really don’t even like saying that, and I wouldn’t like to say that I am a Democrat, because people would then immediately shut their ears, or nearly do so, regarding everything I say now as tainted and suspicious, or, conversely, if a Democrat, they would regard everything I’m saying as correct and true, as long as it is pro-Democrat. I know not everybody has this aversion to the party labels, but many do. It’s hard not to. And it’s hard not to get wrapped up in fervor for your party. So when I was at this event, and they did a little bit of rah-rahing, you know, chanting, “4 more years!!” and “Democrats, are you fired up!!!” I didn’t shout too loudly. I would say just enough that was socially acceptable, because come on, if you go to an event and someone says, “Are y’all fired up!!!” And you just stare in silence, that’s not right. Haha. But this was the first political event I’ve ever attended, actually, even though I have been watching and observing, taking notes from the sidelines, so I really was just here to see what people were thinking, see what was going on, and I was interested in the debate and what the talking points would be. I haven’t been very active in reading the news and don’t know about many of the issues in depth, but I know what they are. And it was a good way to see via the questions asked, what were the real major issues facing American society today.

The main reason why I attended this debate party event was because I was motivated by Animal Farm, but I know I was also hoping to meet some like-minded and interesting people, and hopefully make some new friends. And I think that’s something to remember, as one woman mentioned to me at the event, that she was just there because “it’s better than watching it at home alone.” Like going to church, we partially are motivated to attend these events, or identify with a group just because we want to belong somewhere, and be with people. Many people seek out a group not because they care about whatever cause or ideology the group supports. They simply want to be a part of a group. The desire to belong to a group is an enormously motivating desire in pretty much everyone’s life.

So, with Animal Farm fresh in my mind, I watched our history being written and contemplated the state of American politics today. I’ll try and share some of the thoughts I had about it all.

There was a lot of laughter and smiles at that party. A lot of ridiculing Trump, a lot of fun banter, drinks, mingling, chatting. A woman next to me told me she was playing bingo, and showed me a bingo card, that had phrases such as “drug test” and “34 counts” on it. People were enjoying themselves, and I did enjoy myself too, but on the whole, I wasn’t laughing. I was quite stressed out and concerned.

The demonization of the enemy. The destruction and removal of disloyal party members. The scapegoating and denigration of a minority group. The propogation of blatant falsehoods, and the denial of truth. Revising history, gaslighting. Bullying, outright hostility. Affinity, respect for other authoritarians. Willingness to use force to achieve political goals. Desire to persecute political opponents. Legal trouble. Denouncing of the free press. Proficient use and weaponization of new media technology. Using fear and anger to incense passions and win followers. Attempted overthrow of the government.

Sound like anybody you know?

Anybody, perhaps a few people throughout history who were responsible for the murder and destruction of millions?

Or somebody who is currently running for his second term in office as president of the United States of America?

That’s why I wasn’t laughing.

In Animal Farm, Napoleon doesn’t do much of the talking. Napoleon just issues the decrees, commands. When he talks, he generally says, “This is what we’re doing now,” or “It’s all Snowball’s fault!!!” (Snowball discussion in next paragraph.) His talker, who is something like the media, is Squealer. Squealer manipulates, lies, deflects, deceives, bends, and as a last resort, uses emotional appeals, preying upon fears, to persuade the other animals to support Napoleon’s policies, or to dupe them into thinking they are for the benefit of all of the animals on the farm. He would say, “But, surely you don’t want Mr. Jones to come back, do you?” And that would invoke fear and terror into every animal, as they of course knew that they didn’t want Mr. Jones (the farmer) to come back, and they would then agree that things were at least better with Napoleon. Trump is able to be a Squealer for himself. He has his Squealers too, but Trump the man himself can do the Squealer work. Just from his language last night, I heard both Squealer and Napoleon. For example, throughout the debate I can’t count how many times he repeated that people were coming over the border, were raping, killing, innocent Americans, flooding the border and killing our people. Criminals, bringing over drugs, bringing crime, pouring across the border, flooding across the border, the border, the border, the border. Raping, killing. Like Squealer, Trump is creative, creative and stubborn, and demonstrated it in this debate with his ability to twist the narrative, turn any question on its head, and find or force a way to get back his main points of persuation, and one of his strongest lines, that he repeatedly went back to, was the border, and the immigrants. He used strong and negative language frequently, such as the word “destruction”, mentioning the destruction of cities “like Minneapolis, and.. many other cities” (his words) or the destruction of the country, painting images of cities burning, a country on fire, full of drugs and murderers. Why does he do this? Whether true or not, it can be an effective line, because it plays to fear. At least it works well in Animal Farm. Invoking fear is exactly what Squealer does, generally as a last resort, when his other persuasive tactics have failed to convince the animals. Fear is a powerful motivator, anger is a powerful motivator, and a powerful persuader for the animals. And fear, anger, and anxiety all have a place in the amygdala, one of the most primitive parts of the human brain. So these lines, these images have the power to hit deep, to activate emotions. In Animal Farm, Squealer uses Mr. Jones, and the idea of Mr. Jones coming back to run the farm, as his fear-invoking line. “But, surely you don’t want Mr. Jones to come back, do you?” And in the debate, Trump’s fear-invoking line was about the border, and about illegal immigrants. If a line from Animal Farm, maybe it would look something like this. “But, surely you don’t want an open border, do you?” (Implying that Biden does, and that if did have this, we would have murderers, thieves, and drug-dealers flooding into the country.)

It would make sense then that Trump would not want to support any progress that the Biden administration would take to strengthen border security, even if it was in the best interest of the country. And it does seem that he acted to get a bipartisan border bill from getting passed, a bill so bipartisan that even Mitch McConnell supported it. Even Mitch McConnell!! But if that bill passed, Biden would be able to point to it and say, this is what we’ve done. Not as good for Trump. It would make sense that Trump would want to kill the bill, to give him ammo in this election. And we did see him use that ammo last night, firing away, probably to great effect, over and over and over.

Along with using Mr. Jones as a way to invoke fear in the animals, Napoleon and Squealer both also use Snowball, Napoleon’s political opponent before Napoleon ousted him with force, as a target for the animals’ discontent, anger, and as a scapegoat for the failings on the farm. By the end of the novel, there was nothing so ludicrous that they couldn’t blame Snowball for it. They blamed Snowball for having weeds among the crops, saying that he must have mixed in unwanted seed with the good seed, they blamed Snowball for somehow felling an entire windmill. Anything and everything is attributed to Snowball, and Squealer and Napoleon continually assault Snowball’s reputation and standing until it couldn’t possibly be any lower in the minds of most of the animals on the farm.

Trump uses Biden in the exact same way. Biden is Trump’s Snowball. “You’re ruining this country.” “You are the worst president in the history of the country.” Inflation is Biden’s fault. The border is Biden’s fault. Russian’s invasion of Ukraine is Biden’s fault. China is taking advantage of us because of Biden. Everything is Biden’s fault. Everything is Snowball’s fault. There is a simple source of your frustration, your anger, your ire, and it’s Joe Biden. Biden is responsible for all of it. The windmill that Snowball “destroyed” came down in a storm, because it the walls were too thin. It wasn’t built correctly. This was actually Napoleon’s fault, as Snowball was an engineer, and had designed all plans for the windmill, but by this point Snowball had been chased off and was unable to oversee the construction of the windmill. Napoleon was unable to build it properly, but he blamed Snowball for the fall of the windmill, and said that Snowball had come in the night and taken it down as an act of revenge. Trump even used this line too, in the debate last night. He suggested that Biden had undone some of his policies out of revenge. His words were, “I don’t know why he did it, I think he did it just because I approved them.” Whatever Napoleon says about Snowball, the animals believe, of course, most of them right away, and those that aren’t, after some persuation by Squealer. It’s actually amazing how easily I seem to be able to interchange Trump with Napoleon and Squealer, and Biden with Snowball, here.

What also bothered me was Trump’s language regarding Ukraine, our ally, and the only country right now who is holding back a wave of Russian aggression. They are fighting and dying to keep an authoritarian regime from expanding in power. Supporting freedom domestically and throughout the world is exactly what America is all about, if we profess to be about freedom. Preventing the world from sliding into corrupt, strongman police states, as Russia is, as China has become, as North Korea is. Trump, in front of millions, made demoralizing and negative comments about a country that is so bravely and effectively defying a side that had many advantages, in numbers of troops, in experience, in weapons and technology, and is lead by a war criminal. A country that is a US ally. To the world, Trump claimed that Ukraine was losing, Ukrainians were dying, that we were wasting money in support of them. And he claimed that he would have the war over before he was even the president. If Trump had his way, the war would have been over a long time ago, because Ukraine wouldn’t have gotten a dollar from the US. He was impeached for attempting to change the narritive on election interference, that it was Ukraine instead of Russia, and for using money that had been approved by the Senate as leverage. He was then impeached for the insurrection, impeached twice, if you will recall. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, you should be for freedom. That’s what we’re all about here, isn’t it? Russia is not exactly a free country. Go to Russian and stand on a corner and hold up a sign that says “Down with Putin.” Not even that, hold up a sign that says, “Putin is not a very nice guy.” “Putin farts in his sleep.” How long will you be able to stand there for? Go ahead and try that, let me know how it goes for you. Saying that our ally, a country fighting for democracy, was losing, which is completely not even true in any way, as they have already won, having fought so hard and cost Russia so much, those should have been painful and angering words for every American. For me, but hey, at least there was somebody out there who was quite happy to hear them. (Vladimir Putin.)

As I found when reading Animal Farm, and what I find now, is how easy it is to draw parallels between what happens in the story, and what is happening now. And watching the debate last night, we can easily map Squealer and Napoleon’s words and actions to those of Donald Trump’s, Napoleon, the authoritarian/totalitarian ruler of Animal Farm.

Watching this debate, reflecting on the words of Animal Farm, making these comparisons, has me squirming.

Something else that was news to me, I found out last night – Trumps wants to have a mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. A mass deportation of immigrants, a group of people who Trump considers to be to blame for the apparent destruction of our country. Hmm.. a mass deportation you say? Is that something like having an immigration force, going door to door, looking up people in lists, hunting people down? Rounding people up, putting people in camps, shipping them away to somewhere? Taking people, neighbors, friends, co-workers away from their families, from their children, from their jobs? How about before we round them up, we mark them in some way, maybe we give them little yellow stars, so that we can easily identify them, those who are responsible for the destruction of the country? And you know what, this is all reminding me of something… Yes, I think this has been done before, to great success. I remember hearing about it once, in school or somewhere. And if I remember correctly, it really worked out well for everybody, that one time when a minority group was blamed for everything, rounded up, shipped off, put into camps, taken care of. I mean, it wasn’t really good for the minorities of course, but hey, they shouldn’t have done all those bad things! And our country will be so much better without them! I can totally get behind that, we should do that for ourselves, here in America.

Between Animal Farm and current American politics, there are more parallels to be drawn. The bleating sheep (meaninglessly spewing pro-party rhetoric), Napoleon’s dogs (the Proud Boys, who Trump infamously told to “stand back and stand by”, and what do you say to your dog? Stand down.), sacrificing Boxer before retirement (killing social security, which would probably happen when Trump eliminates the payroll tax, which he apparently intends to do). Increased hardship and suffering for all via blundering policies (Napoleon’s windmill, as the animals had to work twice as hard to try and rebuild it after it had fallen, Trump’s 10% tariff on all domestic imports, Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Trump killing the payroll tax, Trump deporting 5% of our economy.)

Benjamin The Donkey

Last night I read a story called Yugao, from my Anthology of Japanese Literature. Yugao was a chapter of the great Japanese masterpiece called Genji Monogatari, which is usually (always?) translated into English as The Tale of Genji. It is considered to be Japan’s greatest work of literature, and it was written all the way back in the 11th century. Think about that, people. That’s 1000 years ago. 1000 years ago, and it slaps. And I was thinking, are there any books that we still read in Western literature that are that old? I thought of The Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare stuff, but I don’t actually know when they were written. I’m going to guess 15th century. Shall we Google it? (Shakespeare, 16th century, The Canterbury Tales end of 14th century.) Don Quixote, another old Western classic, 16th century. We have Beowulf, and Beowulf is older, between 600-1000 CE. From what I just read last night in The Tale of Genji, Beowulf is really primitive in comparison. Beowulf also slaps though.

All I really wanted to say here is that Yugao was riveting and compelling, and that maybe we should be including The Tale of Genji on our lists of greatest works of literature, and I want to read the whole book.

I dismantled more Chinese Privet this morning. I needed something to get me activated, give me some enthusiasm. Seek, and ye shall find. Every time I look, I find more of it in my yard. I now have an enormous pile of trunks and branches in the driveway.

Last night I read that snippet of The Tale of Genji, but a few nights ago I read Animal Farm. You know, in high school I believe I really did say, in my English class, when we were discussing the book, or at least I definitely thought this, because it has now been ringing in my ears, I remember thinking, “Maybe this book doesn’t have a political message. Maybe there is no symbolism. Maybe he just wanted to write about animals.” Well, high school me was not very smart. At least, I didn’t know much about the world and the machinations and movements of societies. I also remember that I thought Old Man and The Sea was boring, and could not understand how this was a celebrated work of literature. I’ve also recently read that, and of course just like with Animal Farm, feel very differently about it now, but that’s how it goes. We are not always ready for what the books have to tell us, and especially I’m sure when the books are about life, and living, and you’re young and still don’t know much about that. But I read Animal Farm, after attempting again like every single night for the last month, it feels like, to try and go to sleep before midnight, and after attempting this and again laying in bed with my mind whirring, fully awake, for an hour, I opened it up, and I read it all the way through. I have gotten into the habit of testing out books, because I have picked up so many classics from an amazing used goods store here in Nashville called MacKays’s, and when I’m looking for something to read I will just grab one that I have laying around and start reading, and if it grabs me I’ll keep reading, and if not I’ll put it down and plan to come back to it when I’m ready for it. So I just picked up Animal Farm to take a little looksie, and then I didn’t put it back down until I was done. This little book that I had thougth really nothing of in high school, hit me harder this time around.

The thing about Animal Farm is that, after I was done with it, I felt very disturbed. I was disturbed, I can say, because unfortunately, it was way, way too easy to draw parallels between what happened on that farm (I mean some countries right now are fully fledged Napoleon farms, North Korea, China, Russia), and what’s happening in many countries around the world, but most unfortunately, with what’s happening here in America. In such plain and simple language, Orwell shows exactly how a population is tricked or cowed into loyalty to a ruler, the steps by which that ruler is able to establish complete control, and how it ultimately descends into conditions that are just as bad if not worse than any the animals on the farm had experienced before their revolution, in hopes of achieving a more equal and fair society. All of the mechanisms, subtle and not so subtle, the gradual degrees in which the population is subjugated, duped, placated, or cowed, until they are completely subservient to the regime, and the single ruler above all.

In the days since reading it, there’s been one character who’s stayed with me, who I’ve been thinking about, and that’s Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin is the character that really got to me, because Benjamin is exactly who I don’t want to be. Most of the animals on the farm can’t quite grasp what’s happening, the meaning of the events that are taking place, the inevitable outcomes of decisions that are being made. They may not understand at all, or they may have some reservations about changes that they can’t quite express, but their concerns are either relieved by Squealer’s sweet, compelling, and manipulative words, or they are forced into silence by Napoleon’s dogs, or they are steamrolled by the sheep, and never given the chance for public discourse. Some of the animals eventually draw lines in the sand, when pushed too far, but at that point Napoleon (the pig, ruler) has solidified his power, and has the military/police force at his command (in the form of dogs that he bred for the role), and so he can deal with them via force. A few of the other pigs are aware, and dissent, and as they are threats, are killed. Benjamin doesn’t object, doesn’t dissent, but Benjamin is aware. He knows what’s up. Benjamin is old, Benjamin is smart, Benjamin has been around for a long time, and Benjamin is cynical. His expectations are low, and he is not passionate. So, Benjamin is something like an outsider, politically, or inert. He’s not involved, does not lean one way or the other, does not offer any opinions, does not rock the boat. Benjamin is not ignorant, however – he is intelligent, he sees, he understands. He simply chooses passivity. Benjamin cares about one thing, he has no allegance to anything other than his friend, the workhorse, Boxer, and so the only time we see Benjamin show any real emotion or move to action is when Boxer is being taken to his death. Benjamin is so exasperated by the other animals’ stupidity, that they can’t understand that Boxer is not really being taken to the vet, but instead has been sold to the “knacker” to become glue, and so upset that he’s losing Boxer, that he actually does something, and shouts at the all, hey, you dumbasses, that cart says “horse killer” on it, he’s not going to the vet!!!!!! And of course they all try to save Boxer then and fail, and Benjamin goes back to being a passive bystander, now without his best friend, Boxer.

This is why Benjamin has stuck with me. Benjamin is passive, and it costs him his best friend. It probably costs him his happiness too. He’s cynical, and sad. And even though he tries to keep out of affairs and makes no waves, he cannot get out unscathed. The hens die, some of them, because they refuse to lay more eggs for the regime. Their defiance costs them their lives. The pigs die, some of them, because they voice their dissent at the meetings. Benjamin doesn’t die, because he doesn’t dissent – but he still suffers, and he suffers doubly because he loses Boxer, and because he has to live with a cynical, hopeless worldview to justify living his life of inaction.

That begs the question – would you rather resist, risking death for the cause, or would you rather comply, and live (possibly, because Boxer complied, and still he died for it), and suffer? I don’t think that Benjamin ever felt compelled to resist, though, because Benjamin didn’t care one way or the other. I think Benjamin did not really have a belief that things could be any better, as he says, which actually can be perfectly summed up by the words of a cynical friend of mine, “Life sucks, then you die.” Benjamin had no reason to act, because he didn’t think it would matter, whether Napoleon was the ruler, whether a human was the ruler, or whether Snowball, who could have potentially have been a much better ruler for their new society, was the ruler. In Benjamin’s eyes none of it mattered, because life would still suck, life would still be hard, that that was just how life was.

There were other politically inactive, politically indifferent characters, but they weren’t as aware as Benjamin. Benjamin was indifferent, inactive due to his cynicism. Moses, the raven, also didn’t care who ruled the farm, but that was because he had Sugarcandy Mountain. He was a problem for the pigs in the beginning, because while they were trying to fill the other animals’ heads with ideas about their political systems and designs for the society (which they called, Animalism), Moses was out here telling everyone about Sugarcandy Mountain, and how great Sugarcandy Mountain was, this magical place that you went when you died, and got all the sugar you ever wanted. Moses had religion. He was not interested in the movements of the animals or their society. He was outside of it. (Or, possibly, Moses himself didn’t believe in Sugarcandy Mountain, but both governments, Mr. Jones’s and Napoleon’s found his preaching useful, and so they would treat him well.) Moses was useful to Napoleon later though, I think, when things had gotten so bad that he couldn’t give them much else to work for in terms of hope, so if they couldn’t believe in a good life on the farm anymore, they could at least believe in Sugarcandy Mountain. There was the cat, who just didn’t care about anything at all, (classic cat stereotype) and there was Mollie, the white mare, who just wanted to eat sugar and have ribbons in her hair. She wanted an easy life. She didn’t care about politics, but she liked the way she was treated by Mr. Jones, because she got sugar and ribbons, so for her the previous order was just fine, and in the new one she couldn’t have her sugar and ribbons, so she went to another farm where she could.

I don’t want to be a Benjamin.

Immortality and Chinese Privet

*From 805B N 12th Street, in East Nashville my home base as of February 2024, and where I will most likely be for at least another year, until July 2025.*

I read recently about immortality projects. It was a theory by some guy as to why people try so hard to do things. They work so hard, strive in their fields, crave fame, legacy, having statues built in their honor, having works that live beyond them, as a way to achieve immortality. “Immortality” but dependent upon others to carry it on, in their memory, in their consciousness. In some way we are all immortal whether we live on in human consciousness or not, because our atoms will still exist, although independently. Matter is conserved, no matter is created or destroyed. That’s physics. So all of the little atoms that are part of you now will always be here in the universe, probably. So if you think about it like that, you are immortal, and also, you have been around for a really, really long time. You just exist now in your current form, and if you achieve anything that anyone is going to remember after you die, and leave your current form, they will just be remembering you as you were in your human form.

I guess that’s something like reincarnation, or reappropriation. I find that comforting. And also, isn’t it nice to think that you have already been in this universe for billions of years? That all of the pieces of your puzzle (at the most basic level), all of your fundamental components have been floating around and doing things here in this world for billions of years, and they will continue to do so after you die? I think that’s comforting.

It’s interesting to me that this is what I’m writing about.

I have never really had a fear of death. Maybe just because I’m young, and death still feels far off for me. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I have known some loved ones to die, my grandma, my great aunt, uncle Bob. I miss them. Pets, the hardest one being Bonnie, our black lab. I was there in her final moments at the vet’s office with my dad, and we cried like babies. It was a terrible thing, for a while, to be in a world without her, to be in a world without these people. But I guess I have always felt like, that’s just the way it goes. So we live, so we die. It’s just the natural thing. And, in a way, Grandma Marge, Kathy, Bonnie, Uncle Bob, none of them are completely dead. They live on at least in my memory. There are still photos of them, stories of them, out there. There are people still who know about them, and think about them, and remember them.

We live for a long time. Relative to other organisms, we live for a long time. So, I guess we have more time to become attached to life, and to be used to living. Many insects live short, very short lives, relative to ours. As short as 24 hours. Imagine if we lived for 24 hours? What that would feel like? We couldn’t really do it. You would have no time to learn anything, no time to recover from anything, no time to process anything, unless you could do it in an incredibly short period of time. If your capabilities were quickened, and every hour was like for us now, a year, then you could benefit from learning things, from living on something other than pure instinct. That’s what I’m getting at. Because in our long lives, we have the ability to learn, to make mistakes, to fall, and to get back up, to process, and evolve, within ourselves. Insects don’t have time for that. They really just have time for living.

The main reason that I’m thinking about insects right now is because, they are dying every day. Insects, and arthropods, the tiny creatures. Almost every day I am aware of, and even I am the perpetrator of, the death of other beings around me. In one night here, in just about 10 minutes, I killed over 20 earwigs. They were assaulting the house, and they had to be defeated. I could have captured them all, it’s true. I could have released them. I capture and release most creatures that find their way in here, but the earwigs, I won’t lie, I kill them. And I always feel bad about it, and I always apologize, and make it swift and as painless as possible. A few days ago I watched a spider that has been occupying a corner of the house for weeks, which I realize has become a kind of pet to me, and I pass by it and say hi every time I walk into my room, I watched this spider finally catch something, a large ant, and roll it up in webbing, and drink its ant juice. In recent weeks I’ve killed tens if not a hundred mosquitoes. I’ve killed a flea too. All meeting the ends of their lives. That’s a lot of death.

There was a baby possum who died in the street in front of the house. It was run over. I had to walk by its little carcass to get to my front door. That was a sad death.

We want to be immortal. We want to be remembered. To have a legacy. It makes sense. This desire pushes us to do things that are beneficial for our tribe. Creating moving works of art, technological feats, scientific breakthroughs, conquests, inspiring a revolution, being remembered as a good brother, mother, father, all of these things are good for your tribe. Maybe not good for all of your tribe, maybe not even good for yourself, in your life, and maybe not good for the other tribes, but some people outside of yourself will benefit from your immortality project, probably, unless you’re Hitler.

If you died and no one knew, and no one remembered you, so you died the ultimate death to humanity, would you care? What do you think about that? Would you be content to go quietly into the night?

Is an immortality project and the desire for human immortality unnatural? Wrong?

Kurt Cobain is dead, but in a way he is quite alive to me. I actually had to remind myself that “this is a dead man that I’m listening to.” This is a dead man who I’m seeing on my screen, this is a dead man whose voice I hear. And the other members of the band are alive, but they’re not in their 20’s, they’re not the same age as when they played these songs as I listen to them. Time has moved on, but in a way, when I listen to the music, Kurt is alive, Chad, Krist, Dave are all young. Now Kurt as a human is dead, although his atoms are still here, still around on Earth, all of the bits and pieces of him haven’t gone anywhere.

I write for immortality. I write for legacy. I never really decided to do this, I just do it. It is a natural desire that I have. I have many journals now, I’ve kept over the years, and I write with other people in mind, my family, my future. I don’t think I do it because I care about being remembered, but actually, maybe that’s so. I thought I always did it because I just thought they would think it was interesting, this guy, their great great grandpa, or great Uncle, some Swanson in the line, some distant member of the bloodline, this is what he was getting into, this is what he was thinking about, this is what he was working on, and these are the events and details of his life, at that time, as he lived it. History. I think that’s interesting stuff, me personally. I write with the thought that someday, somebody could read all of this and know who I was, in a way, and what I thought about, how I lived, what my struggles were, what kinds of adventures I had.

I dismantled a Chinese Privet tree with my bare hands. I can see the headless, torn trunk from the window. That’s why I’m thinking about it. It’s an invasive species here in Tennessee, (I’m finally getting comfortable spelling Tennessee), as I recently learned volunteering at a local park. A really, really successful invasive species. Our fearless leader, Ian, said that I would see it everywhere now, and he was right. What has been seen cannot be unseen. It’s all over the place, including in my small yard, all along the fence of our driveway, between our house and the neighbors. I pulled it all up, tore it, four or five plants, and then there was the big mamba jamba. Chinese Privet can get big, like 8+ feet tall big, although it’s not thick. It’s lithe and springy. It was interesting that there were no birds’ nests in the branches, I don’t know if they could even support them. I think about that because a tree of similar size right next to this one had two birds’ nests in it, but the juniper had none. The thing about at least this invasive in particular is that it is extremely dominant now, but provides very little ecological value (so I’ve read). It doesn’t really do anything for the environment, it doesn’t feed anybody, and it seems like it doesn’t shelter anybody, and it bodies out other native plants that do. So it’s obviously terrifying to see literally thousands and thousands of Chinese Privets thriving all over Shelby Park, all over Nashville. The last one in my yard, it was a big one, about 8 feet tall, and I just left it there after this first day of juniper removal. A few days later though, I was caffeinated, I was inspired, and I was ready to do some damage. So I twisted it all apart. I had no tools, and just had to use my bare hands, but they did the job, although it was hard work. It takes a lot to get a Chinese Privet to snap. It would probably be impossible to take down in a storm, because it has really nebulous, sprawling roots, and is so incredibly flexible. I found that the branches would break when I bent them all the way back 180 degrees, and only then. But they would break, and that was the way to break them. You just had to keep bending, keep bending, keep bending. The actual trunk of the tree, it’s like an inch in diameter, I’m guessing from looking at it from the window, I couldn’t take down because it’s grown into the chain link fence. It’s kind of weaved in there.

There are other invasive plants here, another one is Japanese Honeysuckle, that is really common. I’m not confident in IDing that one, but if it is what I think it has been, it is also completely everywhere, almost as prolific as the Chinese Privet. I think there is actually one right across from me right now, because I just Googled a photo of it, and looked out of my window, and see what appears to be exactly what the Google has just shown me.

Japanese Honeysuckle?

Aaaaand, I found it. Well, I really think I did. It wasn’t what I was looking at from across the window though, that’s something else. I kept scouring and I found it after much hunting, one large vine. It took me about 30 minutes here to decide if it really was Japanese Honeysuckle. Part of knowing what something is, is knowing what it isn’t. If you know what other plants it could be it makes it a lot easier to identify them. That’s why I don’t feel so confident in identifying plants yet, because I just don’t know many plants. So I don’t really know what else is out there, if there are any lookalikes, any trickery. But it seems that there are two native honeysuckles in Tenneessee and neither of them really look like the Japanese Honeysuckle, and it did seem to match the photos almost perfectly. It’s much easier to ID things when there are berries and flowers. If it was in bloom this would have been a done deal in a minute.

In Japan there is a plum tree that looks a lot like the sakura (cherry) trees. Similar leaves, similar flowers, similar size, and for a long time I thought the tree outside of my apartment complex in Ozu was a sakura tree. It was actually a plum tree. You can be easily duped, but there was a good tell if you knew it, which was that the sakura trees have a distinct horizontal striping pattern on the bark, and the plum trees don’t. There are a few tells, but that was the one I looked for because it’s so obvious.

source: https://vcbf.ca/2014/03/27/plum-versus-cherry-trees-how-to-tell-the-difference/
source: https://vcbf.ca/2014/03/27/plum-versus-cherry-trees-how-to-tell-the-difference/

I’m enjoying writing for you. I’m enjoying writing for me, too. I think that if I enjoy it, you will enjoy it too. I feel that way about art. Generally, if you like it, other people will like it too. Your taste probably determines how many people will like it. If you have a broader taste, or more niche, but at least if you like what you’re making, however broad or niche the appeal could be, somebody else is going to like it too. I write this because I do think, as some other creators probably do, “Will anybody actually like this?” Or, “Will anybody care about this?” And I think, if YOU do, then the answer is yes, there is at least one other person out there who is going to like it as much as you do. And of course, if you don’t like it, your creation, still there can be people who will like it. It could be the greatest work of art they have ever beheld. We probably shouldn’t get too hung up on whether anyone cares, or anyone likes our work or not at all, even though you want to. Just do your best, and be authentic, and let the people decide.

I was talking about the local park with all of the invasive Chinese Privet, where I did the volunteering. That park is called Shelby Park, and it’s a really great park. We are blessed to have it here in East Nashville. It’s huge, many square miles, (don’t ask me how many), many football fields, and has a lake, baseball fields, tennis courts, a dog park, walking trails, and one of my favorite parts, an enormous train bridge in the sky, that carries trains with literally hundreds of massive cars. So above your wonderful park with fields and forests and children playing, there is occassionally hundreds or thousands of tons of iron and steel and coal and things chugging across the sky. There are two benches on a hill that face the lake, and sitting on these benches you can see a large section of one part of the park. You can see out over the lake (maybe I should call it a large pond, it’s not big enough for lake status), and to your right you can see some flat grass areas, trees beyond, people fishing, people walking on the path down in front of you, walking around the large pond, and beyond, you can see baseball fields, cars driving around, and then further, at the edge before trees and the more forested section of park, off in the distance, you have a perfect view of the giant train bridge, above it all, and carrying the heavy, long trains. I like to sit on that bench and survey, and one time I was sitting there, and I watched a train pass, and I just marveled at it for what it was, a product of our human ingenuity, our engineering prowess. I felt like I had taken trains for granted, honestly, because you know, they’re not new technology for me, they were already commonplace and in the world when I showed up here, and I think that for the first time I really appreciated what exactly this train was doing, and after what felt like a long time, that one car after another car was passing by, I started actually counting them, because there were so many, and I counted the rest, which was something like 80, and so that train was probably carrying 200+ cars, of coal, gas, whatever else was in those cars. That one engine, all that material, thousands and thousands of pounds, and across that giant bridge, with all of its tresses and beams and metal, able to support all of those thousands of pounds of train, and that was all done by human hands, all designed and built by human hands, and human minds. Incredible.

I brought us back to Shelby Park because I wanted to tell you about the deer in the fields. There is a wild grassland field at Shelby Park that is probably about two or three football fields big. Tall grass, with wildflowers and things. And there is a pavillion there, a small viewing platform that raises a bit above the field, so you can look out over all of it. I had been to this field when I first moved here in winter, and it wasn’t much back then, kind of like a corn field is in winter, with just some leftover dead stalks of corn, the grass being all dormant, but just recently I had gone back there, and it is now completely stunning. And the best part about it were the deer. There were several deer, out among the grass, mostly hidden, but you could see the tops of their bodies, and their heads when they would raise them up, several deer on their own, out there in the grass and the flowers, munching away, and being deer. I’ve never seen deer in an environment like that, and I was there as the sun started to set, in that warm glow. It was special and beautiful. I felt like I was seeing the Earth before humanity. There was a little cottontail rabbit hanging out in the short, mowed grass around the pavillion, at the edge of the tall grass, along with a big ol’ doe, who kept giving me suspicious looks. She was keeping an eye on me, cautiously, but when people came by with their dogs, she would freeze, and kept her eyes on the dogs until they were out of sight. I’ll have to go back and get some photos of this meadow for the blog.

I’ll also have to photograph the little swamp that borders the forest and the meadow. There is a variety of interesting terrain at Shelby, truly. Between the edge and meadow, and again on the other side, there is some swamp/bog ground, with dead old tree trunks, my guess is dead from the roots drowning, and tufts of bushes and things. There was a family of deer splashing around and grazing in the swamp too.

Actually I’m calling it a swamp but I don’t think it is a swamp. I just did some Googling and now I’m sure it’s not a swamp. But is it a fen, bog, or marsh? That’s the million dollar question.

After thinking about honeysuckles I noticed this one on a walk. One of the native honeysuckles, called Coral or Trumpet Honeysuckle (I hope I IDed it right)
Remnants of the Chinese Privet

Thoughts From The Cubicle: Honking, Homicidal Urges, Jewish Man Parts the Vehicular Sea

*Bored at my cubicle. Writing from 1700 Broadway, Manhattan. 1/11/24, 3-something pm.*

I’m going a little crazy here. I need a wheel. Like a hamster wheel. I need that thing. I would be running on it right now. I would be running so fast. Then, I would get tired, and I would go over to my water tower drinker thing, and drink some water, and then hop back on the wheel, and run again. What could be more fun than a treadmill? A giant, circular treadmill. I’m so into that. Someone design that right now. Cubicle hamster wheels. For humans. I’m so in. Give me 10% of the profits for the idea. For just one year. You can keep the rest. I don’t need a lot to live on. Just enough. Just enough from my human hamster wheel invention. And people will say, what did you do for your monies? And I’ll say, I proposed the idea of the human hamster wheel, the now world-wide office phenomenon. And they’ll say, that’s great. That was a great idea. Thank you for your great contribution to society.

(I’ve had a lot of coffee.)

I would settle for a treadmill. A standing treadmill desk. I proposed that many times to my senseis in the teacher staff room, when I was teaching in Kumamoto. I once piled up books and actually did stand at my desk, and of course it was awkward and attracted a lot of attention. I was the only teacher standing at their desk in a room of 40, 50 people. And those desks are not cubicles. There are no barriers. You are side-by-side. So there I was, lording over everyone, with my laptop quite precariously placed on a tower of books, typing away. That experiment didn’t last long, I have to say. Too risky, too distracting. I was always doing something to attract attention in that office, not that I was trying to. It just so happened that often I would do things like build a standing desk tower out of books or eat large raw carrots at my desk (like “Bugs Bunny”). It just happened that way. But I enjoyed that brief stint with my standing desk. It would have been even better if I was walking at the same time. Even better, if I was running, on a giant circular wheel. The human hamster wheel.

I have to write comedic material. I have to exercise my imagination. It is very important for my soul and spirit. If I am a very sick man, comedy is the only thing that can save me. I have to laugh. Otherwise, it is great suffering. That must be why New York is famous for comedy. It makes a lot of sense. You have to have some laughs or you’ll lose it. (Your sanity, that is. If you ever had it.) You just can’t take it otherwise.

Last night on my walk to the local grocery store Shoprite, I witnessed another insanity inducing spectacle, as I do on every walk. This absurd spectacle was a thick Jewish man, in full black navy suit, nice shoes, little round hat (kippah), talking on the phone, a man of business, a man who clearly has some sense. This man was across from me at THE most dangerous intersection on my walk to Shoprite, which is fraught with dangerous intersections, because every intersection in NYC is dangerous – but this intersection in particular is dangerous because it’s underneath a train, with pillars that can obscure view of pedestrains, and with many pedestrians, with small lanes separated from big lanes by pillars, and with 5 streets going into it, with one of them coming in diagonally, so the cars have to fork left or right.. There’s a lot happening at this crazy intersection, a lot of ways for it to all go wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, I could spend hours, hours upon hours upon hours reguiling to you the amazing and extraordinary things I have seen these New York city drivers do. There’s almost nothing they won’t do. No action too outrageous, nothing too disgraceful, and nobody to stop them. First, it is horrifying. Then, it is astounding. It is fascinating. But mostly, it is horrifying.

They will honk at the drop of a hat. They will honk not at the drop of a hat. They will honk at you for parking. They will honk at you for turning. They will honk at you for stopping at a stop sign, they will honk at you one single millisecond after the light turns green and you haven’t slammed on the gas, they will honk if they can’t go anywhere for any reason, say, an EMT car that has stopped for a medical emergency and is loading someone in a stretcher onto the ambulance (saw this two nights ago), and they will honk as a form of personal expression. A beautiful, poetic expression, of anger, of joy, of love, of life. On a normal Thursday, last week, over a 24 hour period, I estimated that there were between 200-300 honks happening in the streets around my apartment on Avenue H, south Flatbush, Brooklyn. Between 200-300 honks. With that, you are also guaranteed at least one car alarm a day, and no less than 10 total minutes combined of sirens. I hear every one of these honks, every one of these sirens, and every car alarm. Peppered throughout, there are also random explosions that sound like gunshots or fireworks, but they aren’t – they’re just people’s motors, you know, exploding. That’s fine though, because that makes those people feel special and powerful and cool, and what, am I just going to say someone is an asshole because they make little explosion gunshot noises every day so that they can feel powerful cool and special? No, no. I wouldn’t deny them that, and I wouldn’t deny anyone their little teddy bear that they need to snuggle up with at night to keep the loneliness at bay.

The average length of a honk varies, depending on their purpose, just like with bird calls. Mainly, length of honk corrolates with rage/exasperation level of the driver, and can be used as a guage of the strength of the offense of the offender. (My hypothesis, at least.) Between 0.5-2 seconds is the average, but is not uncommon to hear a honk that is over 5 seconds long. If you get that far with it, that means the offender is really messing up, and/or the honker is really angry. Now, a 5 second honk may not sound that long, guys n’ gals, but let me tell you – it is, and if you don’t think it is, and even if you do, I want you to count to 5 for me right now. Count the Mississippi way, count properly. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi, 4 Mississippi, 5 Mississippi. Ok. Now read that again, and play a honk sound in your mind. Imagine that someone is honking that entire time. Time is a relative thing. When you hear someone honk for 5 seconds, you realize that 5 seconds is a very long time. In honk time, 5 seconds is long. I hear 5 second honks often, probably every other day. And I can truthfully tell you that I’ve heard honks of up to 15 seconds. When it’s that long, anything over 5 seconds, you can only help to marvel at it. How angry can they be? How long will they go for? When will they call it? What a honk, what a fucking honk! There is something marvelous about it.

Now, why do these Brooklyn drivers do this? It’s a good question. If they’re here driving in Brooklyn, chances are that they live here in Brooklyn. They must know that there are potentially hundreds of people around who will hear their honk. They are certainly aware of the great detriment to everyone that is rampant, unchecked noise pollution. They undoubtedly have read all of the many scientific articles that have been written about the effects of noise pollution on human health, on child development, on mental health, on stress and anxiety levels, blood pressure, and such. I am positive that they are well acquainted with the facts. And knowing all of this, still, they honk. This is really an incredible thing. What could explain it?

I will tell you, my hypothesis. After careful consideration, and much contemplation, I can say that with high probability… They’re angry. Yes, they are in fact angry. They don’t always have to be, they may just be annoyed, they may even be trying to be helpful, but I would say in most cases, these honks are laden with rage. That is part of it, yes, but there is something else yet, that plays a bigger part. More than rage, I suspect, is that fundamentally, these people are unintelligent. Yes, unfortunately they may just be dumb, downright stupid, plain and simple. It may be general unintelligence, or it may be anger-induced stupidity, as anger does shut down your prefrontal cortex, and prevents you from having any logical, reasoning thought – however, whether they are all the time stupid, or just stupid while the horn is on, at the time of them honking that horn, they are in most cases, dumb. It is a sobering fact, yes, because it means that of course, many of these people that I share this community with, my brothers and sisters of America, don’t have much going on for them in the brain department, but it’s important to know, because then you can understand them somewhat better, and you see that honking isn’t entirely their fault. Like a baby that craps in its own diaper, it just doesn’t know any better. It can’t understand. And the anger, the anger is understandable. There is quite a lot of anger here. Really I have never witnessed so much horrible screaming, shouting, swearing, and fighting in my life. Crushing poverty, abysmal living conditions, and rampant mental illness may have something to do with it, but surprisingly there haven’t been any studies done to link these together, and so we just can’t say for sure. My roommate played for me a recording he took of a couple fighting at his last apartment complex, also in Flatbush, only a few streets over from where I was living. It sounded like they were right outside the door, but he said they were in their room, one floor up. I have never heard such horrible screaming and fighting in my life. And, what would you know, the man murdered someone the next month! Now you know, if that man gets behind the wheel, he’s honking that horn. He’s honking that horn all day and all night.

I was at the apartment one day, it was 10 o’clock sharp on a beautiful, crisp Monday morning, and for thirty solid minutes, there was an extraordinary, unparalleled and unprecedented honk-fiesta happening down in the street outside of my window. I had a wounded leg, or I would have gone down and witnessed up-close what was happening. I had to satisfy myself by watching from the window. I observed this spectacle from my sixth floor window perch, and upon looking out into the street, saw immediately what the problem was. Someone seemed to have either abandoned their car in the middle of the street, or was just sitting in it, parked sideways, completely plugging the street and preventing anyone from getting through. In some other places where there are rules on the road and people know about them, this may be a surprise, but here, that is nothing out of the ordinary. I wouldn’t bat an eye at that. I wouldn’t expect any of the other drivers to be stymied by such a conundrum either, but alas, several cars on either side had been caught in this trap, and were sitting there, throwing up their hands, and honking. Honking frequently, honking aggressively, honking exasperatedly, at this inanimate object that we aren’t even sure if had a human in it or not. I’ll assume there was a human in there, but they were clearly unresponsive. This sideways car was so exasperating, so styming for the drivers of south Flatbush, Brooklyn, that they spent an hour honking at it, honk, honk, honking away at the problem, chipping away at it one honk at a time. I don’t know how the situation was resolved in the end. I couldn’t stand there all day. But I’m sure that with certainty the car was moved only because of the great courage and vigilance of the Brooklyn honking army.

In defense of the drivers of Brooklyn, along with acknowledging their anger, and their low intelligence, I think they don’t actually know that there are any laws, rules, or regulations related to driving at all. Again, like babies crapping themselves, they’re just ignorant. They probably just bought a nice shiny car from the car store that they can’t afford, grabbed the keys, started it up, and drove it right off the lot onto Coney Island Boulevard, and are having a grand ol’ time parking on anything that is pavement, slamming the big button in middle of the wheel that makes a fun loud noise, stopping the car and turning around wherever they are the instant they realize they’ve made a wrong turn, and all of those other fun things you get to do when there are literally no rules on the road at all. But it’s not their fault. They simply don’t know any better, or can’t understand. And who’s going to tell them? Not the gov’ment. The gov’ment has bigger fish to fry. I don’t know what they are frying, exactly. But don’t worry folks, they’re frying something big, don’t you worry about it.

I have never had homicidal rage before. I can tell you that honestly. I am a mild mannered individual. I have never wanted to kill anybody. That is, I had never wanted to kill anybody before I moved to New York City. Oh boy, the fantasies I have now! What I would do to these honkers. What wouldn’t I do to these honkers! Rocket launcher, RPG, car bombs, grenades, AK47, just a straight up katana to the heart, death by shuriken. Climbing onto the hood of the car, smashing through the window, and stabbing them in the chest with a beautiful gleaming katana. I know, it sounds horrible. I don’t like writing this. (Ok, I do.) Drop a grenade from the window, watch it fall with glee, blow them all up. That’s one of my favorite fantasies. Stand in the street, wait a few seconds for the next honking offender, and just unload on them with your AK. I would really love to fire a predator missle at them, you know, from Call Of Duty. You get a 5 kill streak and you get to fire a missle from a Reaper drone, 5000 feet up, a missle guided by thermals, but in this case, it would be guided by sound, and go straight to the worst offender. I know, it’s bad. But you have no idea how much satisfaction it brings me to write this. Well, unless you live in Brooklyn, and then you do. You just don’t understand until you’ve been there. It’ll drive you insane.

It’s not that I want them to die. Well.. I do. But it’s not like I want to kill them. But.. dammit, I do want to kill them. Mostly, I want the honking to stop, immediately, and preferably, violently. To send a message. What I’m trying to say is that, I think, at a certain point you revoke your right to live. Do you know what I mean? Nobody by default deserves to die. They have to do something that is bad enough to warrant their death, like honk for 5 seconds straight, or engage in and perpetuate an infuriating and abominable honking culture. You honk for 5 seconds, 15 seconds, just honk too much, when you really, can’t be honking anymore, and.. ok, yeah, you can die now. You are now eligible for dying. Someone has basically every right to kill you. Honestly, it wouldn’t be unwarranted. What else can they do? If you push people far enough, they simply don’t have another choice. The gov’ment is frying other fish. They aren’t going to stop you. It’s up to me and my sonic predator missle. It’s vigilante justice. Most Brooklyners would have no problem with it, I can tell you that. My roommate told me a story of a lady in the neighborhood dropping her air conditioning unit onto the hood of a maniacal honker’s car from her window. Everybody cheered. Such a heartwarming story. Send that woman a box of grenades.

My homicidal urges always pass, and are replaced with pleading. “Please, stop honking, please. Please, stop, please, I’m begging you. No more honking, please.” I have also tried to mandate a no-honking time. These appeals and mandates are decreed from the window. “Hey, no..! No..! Bad! This is no honking time!” I have also shouted words of encouragement. “Yes, good!!!! Keep honking!!! It’s working!!! Woo!!!!” It’s cathartic for me. Just like honking, you may say. I know it, god dammit. I know. Once upon a time, after a particularly homicidal urge had passed, and I was still fantasizing about vigilante justice, the great idea of Anti-Honk Man entered my mind. Like Spiderman, fighting crime, Anti-Honk Man fights honking. He is the superhero that New York City desperately needs. He would be an enormous viral success. We could have Anti-Honk Woman, gender-neutral, whatever, it could be a dog, Anti-Honk Dog, whoever, whatever is willing to rise to the occasion. Anti-Honk Dog can be the sidekick, and has incredible powers of stopping all honking offenders from ever honking again, by tactfully placing car bombs in serious offenders’ cars, and leaving death notes that say “Death 2 Honkers!!!”, or, less homicidally, slashing tires, paintballing cars, etc. There are many ways that Anti-Honk Dog can carry out vigilante justice to the benefit of all Brooklynites. I had another great idea, (unfortunately, again homicidal) that I believe could immediately reduce honking in NYC by 99.9%, and potentially be a great and subtle form of eugenics, which would be that every car be outfitted with a bomb, that will explode upon the horn being held down for more than 2 seconds at once, and/or more than 3 honks a week. Everyone could have two warnings, like a three-strikes you’re out type deal, where the first time it would say, “Strike one: Your car could have exploded right now!” and then, “Strike two: Next time, you’re dead!” And then the third time, “Say goodbye, motherfucker.” Explosion. Oh my god, it would be great. Except it might kill me, an unoffending pedestrian, so we would need another creative solution. The driver’s chair is blasted with 1000000000 billion volts, instantly vaporizing the driver. Yes, that’s great. Maybe a little too painless for a Brooklyn honker, but yes, it would work.

My god this city has turned me into a sick and twisted individual. I have to get out of here.

I have to finish my story about the Jewish businessman crossing the intersection. I think you will really understand how amazing this is, now that you know about how horrible the honking is, and let me say again, I am a mild-mannered individual, NOT homidical. Brooklyn has made me so. I hear honking when I’m sleeping. I am honked awake, in the middle of the night, in the morning. Honking is my alarm clock. Honking tucks me in at night. Honking while I’m pissing, honking while I’m showering, honking while I’m eating, honking while I’m thinking, honking while I’m strolling about the neighborhood. 200-300 honks a day, remember that number people. 200+ jarring, sonic attacks daily.

Our Jewish businessman was crossing this 5 road dangerous intersection, while on the phone. This guy, as he casually chats, swaggers right up to the intersection. I’m watching him from the get go. He starts to walk out into the street. The cars are coming, full on, but so far he’s only walked on the side street, separated, still where cars could go, but not like it’s the main street, which most cars coming from the diagonal are now barreling through. As he comes to this larger street, he does not glance up, he only somewhat slows his stride, and I’m watching in awe, because it looks like, what this man is about to do, is he’s about to attempt to walk through full traffic, like it’s nobody’s fucking business. And you know what? That’s what he did. This man parted the Red Sea. He waited for a small break in the cars, and he walked out, raising his hand up, casually, keeping it low, like he was saying, “Hey bro, just a heads up, I’m crossing now. Thanks.” And he never dropped his conversation on the phone. This man just halted the world for himself, ground at least seven cars to a stop so that he could cross the intersection on a green light, and that’s a crazy thing. His audacity, his power. I envied him. I watched, jaw agape, watched him walk away, like it was nothing, like he hadn’t just pulled off the most impressive feat in Brooklyn that night. This event alone was amazing to witness, but there was something about it that made it even more so. The truly unbelievable thing was not watching a man simply waltz through a high traffic intersection so casually and confidently as this Jewish businessman did. No, the amazing thing was this. In this situation, of a man halting all traffic, thrusting himself out in front of cars moving through a green light, forcing an unpredictable stop from the drivers, putting his own safety at risk, with at least seven cars involved, witnessing, being inconvenienced – in such a situation where honking is actually, 100% justified, and reasonable, and useful.. There was not a single honk.

This event marked a paradigm shift for me. It’s a different set of rules, out here in New York City. It’s a different world.

On the way back from Shoprite, I was waiting for a truck to stop at and pass through a stop sign. Of course I never expect anyone to actually stop at a stop sign, and never to let me walk through a crosswalk. I understand, this is a different set of rules. But the guy in the truck, he didn’t go through. He had the window rolled down, and he was looking at me, and I looked up at him, and he said, with kindness, “Go ahead.” I was shocked. Like a loser kid who a girl has noticed on the playground, or a beaten-down dog that gets a pet. I could hardly believe it, it was like a dream. “Thanks,” I said. And I crossed, and he didn’t run me over.

The Life Of A Rat

Scene – Student is sitting in college philosophy class. Professor is in a particularly tempestuous mood. Every other student is scrolling through Tik Tok on their phones.

*Professor is unaware of every student on phone. Professor has singled out Student not on phone.*

“Tell me son, is the life of a rat’s any difference from that of a human’s?”

*Student feels skin on his face concernedly.*

“Professor, my skin is so dry. Do you have any lotion? I forgot to put my African Shea Nut Butter on this morning.”

“Damn your skin! And no, sorry I don’t have any. Listen to me!”

*Professor slams hands down on table and looks directly at Student.*

“Answer me this – Is the life of a rat’s any different from that of a human’s?”

*The Student think this over.*

“Where does the rat live?”

“New York City.”

“And the human as well?”

“Yes.”

“I would say they are about equal, then.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, the rats don’t have to ride the train. I hear they have pretty good mental health care in their community as well.”

“If you believe this, then would you have any problem with trading places with a New York City rat? Assuming that you do live in New York City.”

*Student thinks this over.*

“Can I pick the rat?”

“No. Completely random.”

“Ok. No problem.”

“Interesting..”

*The Professor lifts hands up off of table and brings finger up to mouth in a contemplative gesture.*

“Ellie!”

*Professor attempts to get the attention of a female student in the back.*

“Ellie!!!”

*Ellie is lost in the Tok.*

*Student throws eraser at Ellie.*

“Wha- Oh my god.”

*Ellie is jolted back to reality. Professor slams hands back down on desk. Professor likes doing this.*

“What were you watching just now?”

*Professor is accusative.*

“Uhm.. I can’t remember.”

“Just try.”

*Ellie’s brain heats up.*

“There was.. an attractive man.. He had curly hair and was speaking fast.. Something about planting seeds..”

*Professor is encouraging.*

“Go on! What kind of seeds? Why were they being planted? Why, Ellie?”

*Ellie’s brain is really cooking now.*

“Seeds.. yes, yes they were lemon seeds! I remember now! I can do something with water and a paper towel and dirt! With just enough sunlight, I can grow minature lemon trees in my apartment window, and enjoy my own minature lemons!!”

*Ellie is excited.*

“Good Ellie, good!! Now, let me ask you one more question. Ellie. Ellie, stay with me girl!”

*Ellie is deep into another Tik Tok.*

*Student throws highlighter at Ellie’s face.*

“Wha- Oh my god.”

*Ellie is once again forced to return to this horrible plane of existence.*

“Ellie, I have one more question for you.”

“Ok.”

“Does the average rat in New York City have a better life than the average New Yorker?”

*Ellie sets her phone down. With a flourish, she tosses her hair back and stands up.*

“Professor, I have been waiting for someone to ask me this question for my entire life.”

*Ellie proceeds to expound upon the struggles of human existence, on the quest for individual freedom, of collective suffering, of easy access to pizza, on the differences between rats and humans.. Professor is completely engrossed. Student is furiously taking notes.*

“..moreover, in New York City both rats and humans are free to piss anywhere, on anyone, and at any time they so desire. If that is not true liberation, what is? And so, on the grounds aforementioned, I would argue that your question is fundamentally flawed, and can only be substituted by an altered and improved one – Is there any difference between the average New Yorker and the average New York rat at all?”

*Professor and Student are awestruck. They begin to applaud. Some other members of the class who have a particularly strong Pavlovian response unconsciously join in the applause.*

“Brilliant, Ellie! Brilliant!”

*Ellie bows and returns to her phone. A student in the front row, sensing a viral moment, recorded the entire speech and uploaded it at 4x speed paired with a Minecraft toilet-building compilation and a video of cats dancing to Odetari’s “GOOD LOYAL THOTS”. The video was an overnight success because Ellie was hot.*

“Class dismissed!”

*The Professor shuffles papers and walks out. Student picks up highlighter and eraser off of floor and follows him. One student has a crush on the professor and follows him out. All other students remain and continue scrolling.*

Heaven

*Man regains consciousness. He is standing before the pearly gates of heaven. Next to him is a kiosk with an angel. She is painting her nails.*

“Where am I?”

*Angel continues painting nails.*

“You’re at Disneyland.”

“Please, can you tell me what’s going on? I was just walking through the Walmart parking lot with my new copy of Season 2 of The Office on Blu-ray. I really love that show.”

*Angel rolls her eyes and sighs. Angel stops painting her nails and looks at man.*

“You’re dead now. You got hit by a car. Sorry.”

*Man processes his death.*

“Oh, oh my god…”

*Woman flips open the laptop on the counter of her kiosk. It’s a MacBook Pro M2.*

“You want in or what?”

*Man regains his senses.*

“I.. I guess I do, yeah.”

“Let me pull up your record.”

*Angel starts typing loudly.*

“Is that a MacBook Pro?”

“Yeah. We got them when Steve Jobs died.”

“Oh. It’s nice that he got into heaven.”

“We were on the fence about him. But he had good tech.”

*Woman stops typing.*

“You’re Dennis Flenaggan, yeah?”

“That’s right.”

“It says here that you didn’t pay taxes for three years.”

“I did pay them, I just paid them late. Why does that matter? Isn’t that something for the government to deal with?”

“Heaven is a branch of the US government. Do you have your passport?”

“No.”

“You can’t get in without it. You’re gonna have to go back and get it.”

“How do I do that?”

“You can fill out this application to return as a ghost. The approval rate is arbitrary and it takes about seven to twelve years to process.”

*Man is displeased.*

“This is ridiculous!”

*Angel shrugs.*

“You can try winning a Mr. Universe contest. Usually they let the winner in and they can become governor of heaven. It will also be good for your acting career.”

*Angel points to a nearby Mr. Universe contest.*

“I can’t win that. I have the body of a tiny twink.”

“They don’t judge you based on your actual competence. Only on your perceived competence. Just tell that them that you’re strong and attack the other competitors. Confidence is everything.”

*Man enters Mr. Universe contest. Man gets up on stage with other contestants.*

“I’m really strong!”

*Man gets some attention from the crowd.*

*Another man says “I’m really strong!” He gets attention from the crowd.*

“That man isn’t strong! That man is weak!”

*Crowd is unsure.*

*Competition ensues. Other contestant defends his strength. Man says other contestant is weak more times than other contestant says he’s not weak. Man is very convincing. Man wins and is given a beer. Man returns to kiosk.*

*Angel has resumed painting her nails.*

“Wow. That really worked.”

*Angel does not look up from nails.*

“Whoopie.”

“Can I go in now?”

*Angel sighs.*

“Ugh, yes. Here is your badge. Scan this to get in and out of the gate. If you have to smoke, take it outside.”

*Angel hands him plastic badge.*

“You guys smoke here?”

“Yeah. It’s heavily taxed. Good revenue for the state.”

*Man scans badge and enters pearly gates of Heaven. Man begins shouting.*

“Hello, God??”

*A nearby Angel is annoyed.*

“You sound like an idiot right now.”

“Is God here?”

“No. He lives in Kansas.”

“Hey, you look a lot like Steve Jobs..”

*Steve Jobs angel starts walking away.*

“Wait! How can I talk to God?”

*Steve Jobs angel turns around.*

“You have to meet him in solo queue.”

“What?”

“God is top rank League player. If you match with him and you’re lucky, he’ll send you a Discord link.”

*Man is astounded.*

“Damn. Even God plays League..”

“His Summoner name is SukkMyShrooms. Sometimes he streams on Twitch.”

“Jesus Christ. Does that mean..?”

*Steve Jobs angel walks off.*

*Man puts his head in his hands as he realizes God is a Teemo main.*

*Man leaves Heaven and goes to the angel at the kiosk.*

“I’ve had enough. I want out.”

*Angel is playing Candy Crush.*

“How do I get to Hell?”

*Angel gestures vaguely.*

“Elevator.”

*Man steps into Hellevator. There are three buttons. Heaven, Hell, and Macy’s.*

“I do need a new coat..”

*Man pushes button to Hell.*

*Man arrives at Hell. Elevator doors open. Man steps outside.*

“Hello? Satan?”

*Satan is sitting at a nearby computer with a copy of FL Studio 21 on the screen. Satan is wearing sunglasses and smoking a fat blunt.*

“Sup.”

“Is this Hell?”

“Yuh.”

“Where is everybody?”

*Satan pulls out a chair.*

“Sit down. We makin’ hits n****!”

*Man sits down. Satan starts playing fire beats.*

“Damn Satan. These beats are f***ing fire!”

“I know n****.”

*Satan holds out blunt.*

“Smoke weed?”

*Man takes the blunt and takes a hit. Satan’s weed is satanically dank. Man gets high. Man starts coughing. Satan laughs.*

“Play that one with the baby laugh again..”

*Man starts losing consciousness.*

*Man wakes up in the back of an ambulance.*

Paramedic 1: “He’s back. Nice work Paramedic 2.”

Paramedic 2: “Should I paddle him again?”

Paramedic 1: “Hold on there, cowboy.”

*Man is confused.*

Man: “What? No.. I was making fire beats with Satan..!!!”

Paramedic 1: “Welcome back to the real world buddy. This yours?”

*Paramedic 1 holds up copy of The Office Season 2 on Blu-Ray.*

Man: “Yes, that’s mine, thanks for grabbing it. I really love this show.”

Paramedic 1: “No problem pal. You a Democrat?”

Man: “What? Yes, yes I’ve been a Democrat since the 60’s, I mean I don’t agree with everything they do but -“

Paramedic 1: “Shock him again.”

*Paramedic 2 shocks Man. Man dies.*

*Man regains consciousness. He is laying on the floor of a Macy’s.*

*Man dressed as a Christmas elf stands over him.*

“Hi welcome to Macy’s. Everyone ends up here eventually.”

“Where’s the elevator? I just want to go back to Hell.”

“Sorry pal, elevator’s down for maintenance. What that really means is all of the mechanics are getting naked and having a sexy party.”

*Man puts his head in his hands.*

“Hey, it’s not all bad. You got here just in time for our Christmas sale. Everything’s 99% more expensive.”

*Elf gives Man gift card for $10.*

“This one’s on us. Go crazy.”

“Thanks..”

*Man takes gift card. Man accepts new reality. Man cannot afford to buy anything except a backup button for a pair of pants. Man enjoys window shopping and lives out his eternal afterlife at Macy’s in peace.*

Bob Schmingus

Scene – Two cats are at home sunning themselves. Their owner is out with friends doing things that people do when they are out with friends. The cats are at home doing things that cats do when their owners are out with friends.

Cat 1: “Imagine a world where your name is Bob Schmingus.”

Cat 2: “I don’t follow you.”

Cat 1: “In this world, you have a different name. And your name is Bob Schmingus.”

Cat 2: “Are you sure it isn’t Rob Schmingus?”

Cat 1: “I’m sure.”

Cat 2: “Ok. I’m with you now.”

“You walk down the street. It’s a beautiful sunny day. Much like today.”

“I wouldn’t be walking down the street, even if my name were Jeremy Bombingamoose.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m not a dog.”

*Cat 2 begins to lick self.*

*Cat 1 stands up vertically as the humans do and stretches her arms out into the air expansively.*

“Oh Cat 2, just imagine it! Humor me, will you please!”

“Fine, fine. I’m walking down the street. It’s sunny. A car drives by me. I am disgusted by the exhaust.”

“Good. Now, a neighbor is walking by, your neighbor Hingenburg Jingus, and -“

“I see a dog. The dog is across the street. The dog sees me. I begin hissing aggressively! Die, foul dog!!”

“Cat 2, PLEASE. This is my hypothetical. I created this hypothetical. Please let me direct it. I am the conductor of this train.”

*Cat 2 rolls eyes.*

*Cat 1 is enraged.*

“I AM THE CONDUCTOR OF THIS TRAIN.”

“Alright, alright. You’re the conductor of this train.”

*Cat 1 exhales deeply, repeats “I can’t control others, I can only control myself” several times, and is calmed.*

“Okay. Now, where were we?”

“Hindenburg Jingus.”

“Yes. Your neighbor Hingenburg Jingus greets you with salutations. He says, ‘Hi there, Bobby.’!”

*Cat 2 sits up.*

“Oh my god. I hate being called Bobby. Can I attack him?”

*Cat 1 sighs.*

“Yes, fine. Attack him.”

“REEEEggghhhh!!!”

*Cat 2 assaults Hindenburg Jingus.*

“Hindenburg is shocked! ‘Jesus, Schmingus! What’s gotten into you???’ He cries out!”

“Tell him I’ve got the plague! I’m sick and feral! I’ve completely lost my feline senses!”

“While mauling his face, you tell him so. He throws you off of him and runs away whimpering.”

*Cat 2 lays back down on the ground, paws behind head, staring up at the ceiling full of new visions of grandeur.*

“Hehehe, yes, I like this new me. This new Bobby Schmingus.”

*Cat 1 looks at Cat 2 in surprise.*

“I thought you didn’t like being called Bobby?”

“I don’t. Not by other people.”

*Cat 2 sits up again.*

“Did the dog see me??”

*Cat 1 returns to looking out of the window. She puts her paws behind her back.*

“Yes, he saw all of it.”

*Cat 2 is relieved. He resumes his position of feline recline.*

“Yeah, that dog is not going to mess with me anytime soon.”

“Too true, Bob, too true. In fact, that dog is walking across the street now. His owner found a Tik Tok so good that she has completely forgotten she was walking her dog at all. She has dropped the leash. The dog approaches you, but clearly with no intent for trouble. In fact, the dog appears to be in reverence of you.”

“Ooh.. Perhaps he wants to offer me his services?”

“The dog approaches you. He offers you his services. ‘I am impressed by your volatile emotional state and your no-nonsense demeanor. Together, we can rule the world.’ He hands you his business card.'”

“I look at the business card. It says, ‘Sir Boo Boo, Future Ruler of The World.'”

*Cat 2 takes the card and puts it in his pocket.*

“Tell him I’ll be in touch.”

*Cat 1 is impressed.*

“Things are really going well for you, in this new world of Bob Schmingus.”

“They really are. I feel like a completely different cat.”

*Cat 1 turns around suddenly. Cat 2 is startled.*

“Wait, is that a helicopter?”

“What? Holy crap, it is!”

“It’s landing in the street right in front of you. A man in a black suit is stepping off. He walks over to you and hands you a phone. ‘It’s for you.’ He says!”

*Cat 2 jumps up, holding the phone close to his ear.*

“Hello?”

“‘Is this Bob Schmingus I am talking to?’ Says the man on the phone.”

“It’s Bob. Please, don’t waste my time. I’ve got a manipedi at 10 o’clock sharp.”

“This is the President of The United States speaking.”

“Never heard of him.”

*Cat 2 winks at Cat 1.*

“Dammit Schmingus, enough with the sass! This is serious.”

“What, you have a little mousey problem over at the White House?”

“No, Schmingus. I wish it was only mice this time.”

*The President is clearly stressed out. The President pauses.*

“It’s the Chinese.”

“The Chinese, huh?”

“Yes. You know this kills me, but.. You’re the only one we can rely on now.”

*Cat 2 sighs.*

“Stars have to shine, I guess.” *Cat 2 says to self.*

“What’s the payout?”

“10 cans of your favorite. Friskies, Chicken and Salmon Dinner In Gravy.”

“Make it 20. And I’m off the chicken and salmon. I’m into the Poultry Platter now.”

“I swear to God Schmingus, just get this done and you can have a fresh tuna sandwich and a glass of milk on your little saucer every god damned morning.”

*Cat 2 nods.*

“Leave it to me, Pres. Schmingus always gets his Friskies.”

*Cat 2 hangs up the phone and turns to the helicopter man in black suit.*

“Take me to Shanghai.”

*Cat 2 flies the helicopter himself to Shanghai. He hitchhikes to the King of China’s palace and wields his masterful one-liners and hard-earned knowledge of Chinese cuisine to stop China from buying MacDonalds and renaming it to MacWangs. He is hailed as a national defender of culture and consumes all 20 cans of Friskies in a massive hedonistic binge. Cat 1 beams with pride over the meteoric rise of her protoge.*

At Psychiatrist’s Office

Scene – Man lays on couch in doctor’s office. Psychiatrist sitting in chair. It’s the usual business.

Psychiatrist: “Tell me why you are here.”

Man: “I have a problem with my foot. Aren’t you supposed to have a stethyscope or something.”

*Man pronounces stethiscope “steth-ee-scope“.*

Psychiatrist: “No. I am a mind doctor.”

Man: “Oh jesus I’m in the wrong room.”

Psychiatrist: “Tell me about the circumstances of your birth.”

Man: “This may surprise you. I was born completely naked.”

*Psychiatrist makes a note.*

“I see. And why are you alive now?”

“It is simply because I am not dead.”

*”Simply because I am not dead” The psychiatrist writes.*

“Very interesting. I will now ask you a series of questions related to mayonnaise.”

*Man looks at psychiatrist.*

“Is this going to help my foot?”

“Stop asking me about your foot.”

*Man looks back at the ceiling and sighs.*

“Ok.”

“What amount of mayonnaise would you estimate that you have consumed in your life? You may approximate this.”

“Mayonnaise.. consumed.. I’d say 50 pounds.”

“That’s it?”

“It could be more than that. It could be 60 pounds.”

*Psychiatrist makes a note: self-confidence issues.*

“Thank you. Now please tell me about the most traumatic event of your life. If it is too traumatic, just describe it with vague gestures and I will interpret them. I have studied the intrinsic meaning of gestures quite extensively.”

*Man is confused. Man looks at psychiatrist again.*

“You only asked me one question about mayonnaise.”

“I can ask you another but your insurance policy only covers one mayonnaise-related question.”

*Man gestures vaguely.*

“Ah, skip it.”

*Psychiatrist scribbles furiously: Considerably apathetic.*

“Tell me about your trauma.”

“Do I have to?”

“If you don’t, I will have to make things up.”

“That sounds fun.”

“Very well. You were raised on a dog farm in Korea and were meant to be slaughtered and sold as meat.”

“I’m not a dog.”

*Psychiatrist begins drawing an idyllic scene of a unicorn jumping over a rainbow.*

“Hey, are you even listening to me?”

*Man begins barking.*

*Psychiatrist is nearly completed with his drawing.*

“Doctor, is this couch made with real leather?”

“Yes. Actually I tanned the hides for it myself.”

*Man is really impressed.*

*Psychiatrist is now drawing the main character from Kimetsu no Yaiba.*

“Let’s say I was raised on a dog farm in Korea. How would I know it?”

*Psychiatrist continues drawing.*

“My childhood is actually quite blank for me. I don’t know much about it. I don’t think I would have been raised on a dog farm, and not in Korea. But there’s nothing in me that says it’s not true.”

*Psychiatrist looks up from his flawless Tanjiro drawing.*

“Do you have the perpetual fear that you will be drowned in your water bowl while you try to drink from it?”

“Oh my god. I do.”

“Based on my prior research then, it is highly likely that you were raised on a Korean dog farm.”

*Man is shaken by this revelation.*

“Jesus Christ…”

“I’m sorry, but we went a couple questions over your alloted number of questions, which was one. This visit will not be covered by your insurance.”

“What!”

“My secretary will send you a bill for ten billion dollars.”

“You’re kidding me!”

*Man is outraged.*

“Yes I am actually. It’s only five billion dollars.”

*Man is relieved.*

“Oh thank god.”

“For your foot, you can go across the street to Doctor Steve. His office is at the top of that very tall tower.”

“Doctor Steve?”

“He is a good man. Regardless of your ailment he will attempt to aggressively lower your cholesterol and give you a sleeve gastrectomy.”

“Is there an elevator in the building?”

“Yes but it’s not covered by insurance.”

*Man mutters to himself.*

“F***”

*Psychiatrist looks directly at man and lowers his glasses.*

“They say I am the best in the business.”

“Thanks Doc.”

“Please come again.”

*Psychiatrist shows man to the door. Man walks out on all fours. Man’s tail is wagging amiably. Man is actually a dog.*

Painted-face Woman

Writing from my office, early November 2023.

For some reason as I stood at the office Keurig machine and watched my coffee cup fill up, I thought about church. About my mornings at my old church, I can’t even remember what it was called, I think it was First Presbyterian Church. I never think about my days at church, and when I do, it’s not about the church snack bar. But something this morning, a combination of the cold, the coffee, the lack of sleep – possibly the silence too, since I’d gotten to the office early, and the casual, familiar interaction I had with Yuu, made it so that when I turned back to my cup of coffee, inhaled those beautiful coffee molecules wafting into my nose, the sound and sight of the coffee cup filling up, the way I stood there, waiting, with my hands in my pockets.. it took me back to that basement snack bar at First Presbyterian Church.

These days my past often feels like it didn’t really happen. At least it was someone else’s life, someone else’s memory, and not my own. I just happen to have memories of someone that isn’t me. From a combination of the strangeness of this new reality that I’ve teleported to, the unrelenting amount of notable occurances, and a gradually-accumulating sleep deprivation, depending on how connected to reality I am at the moment I fluctuate between feeling like I’m in a dream, and I’m a character in a novel.

Let me tell you about the painted-face lady.

I was walking to my local subway station, at around 8 in the morning, last week. As I turned the corner of an intersection, where there is always a confluence of people going every which-way, I noticed that someone had seperated from the mass and was now making a beeline for me, like a homing missle. I had been marked as a target. Maybe because of my nice suit, maybe because we had made eye contact. Maybe my overwhelmingly powerful masculine pheramones. I don’t know.

I saw that it was a woman, in a grey sweatshirt, average height. She had caught up to me, and was now walking behind me and to my side, repeating, “I’m hungry, I’m hungry.” I had heard her say this back at the intersection. It’s what made me look at her.

I could see that she had white paint on her head, on her hair, thick white paint, but her face was obscured by a hood. I turned to look at her, and she looked back at me. I was startled. 70% of her face, all of the left half of her face and hair and some of the right half, was covered in thick white paint. With her pointy hood up, with the black hair jutting out of the sides of her head, and coarse, cracking white paint all over her face, she looked like some kind of witch doctor.

I kept walking, her alongside me.

I asked her, “What happened to your face?” I was very curious. She said that someone attacked her, and from her gestures it seemed that she had been attacked with a paint roller, which would explain how the paint got on her, but who the f*** gets attacked with a paint roller? I didn’t press further. She said again, “I’m hungry.”

I was carrying 20 ounces of sourdough bread. I pulled it out of my bag and tried to give it to her. “I have some bread.” I said. “Here.”

She said, “No bread. I don’t got teeth.” And, with her fingers, she pulled back her lips, revealing a mouth devoid of anything but 3 misshapen, rotting fangs. She closed her mouth. This was tough bread. There was no way she could eat it.

I put the bread back in my bag. We kept walking. I had a train to catch. We were walking like we were best friends, side by side. Like we had known each other for a long time, casually chatting about her no teeth and recent paint roller attack.

“What can you eat?” I asked her.

She said, “Oh, soups and…” Something else I didn’t catch. She was hard to understand. I made a decision. I stopped and turned to her.

“I’m going to give you some money. You have to promise me you won’t buy drugs.”

I know that’s an absurd thing to say to a drug addict, but I had to say it nonetheless. She promised, and turned out her pockets to show that they were empty. At the time I didn’t know why she was doing that. She may have been trying to show me that she didn’t have any drugs. She was standing next to me. I pulled out my wallet and opened it up. I had recently withdrawn a large amount of cash. My wallet had probably 30 bills in it. It was overflowing. And as soon as I opened it, we both saw the same thing. Both looking down into that wallet, we saw and felt a power, like the power the sun has, in a sunrise, to light up the world.

This sunrise was green.

She immediately snatched at it. She tried to reach in and pluck the bills out, like a crane diving for a frog, or a fish. Finally, my thousands of hours of intense competitive gaming came to some use. I reacted in microseconds, pinching the wallet closed, and pulling it away. “What the f***!!” I exclaimed in astonishment. Some coins fell out of the wallet and spilled to the ground. I started moving away from her. She was not going to let me go so easily. She held onto me and said, “I have a knife. I’ll stab you.”

Now, I’ll tell you what was going through my mind at this moment. It was something like, “There’s no way I’m about to get stabbed by this b**** on my way to work, and on such a beautiful October morning, right? That would just be completely ridiculous.”

She was brandishing something in her left hand. I looked at it to make sure it was not, in fact, a knife. It was a lighter. She saw that her bluff failed, and was now saying, “I’m just joking. I’m just joking.”

I shrugged her off me. We were now right outside the subway station. I left her on the street and went in.

—

Yes, everybody, come to the great New York City! Come see our wonderful Broadway shows and try fifty-thousand different various of bread, sauce, and cheese! Come down into the subway, and see true poverty, hopelessness, despair! Have a thrilling and authentic encounter with a pathetic man in the grips of a complete psychotic break! Enjoy as your children take in the horror of being trapped on a train with an aggressive, raving lunatic, completely free of charge! (Pro tip: You don’t actually have to pay for the subway. It’s only a suggestion. Only if you want to voice your support for the great work the government is doing here. And they are doing great work.) Extinguish your last flames of faith in humanity as you step past completely unconscious men without shoes or any shred of dignity on the subway platforms! You may even spot the lovable and envious New York rat, living a life better than the average New Yorker! The American dream, alive and well in New York City! The greatest city, in the greatest country on Earth!

Sat Aug 5 // Sun Aug 6 // Mon Aug 7 – DiffusionBee and More Phantasmagorian Creatures

As I was typing this sentence (on Sunday), something caught my eye from the window. It was a small rabbit, or should I say large bunny, bounding across the lawn. I’m writing this time from the second floor bedroom, on a desk in front of a long rectangular window that allows me to look out over our humble kingdom. From this perch I can gaze out over the yard and – wow, there goes another bunny! That one was not bounding, that was a hurried scamper. A comical scamper. Boy those things can move quick, can’t they. I don’t think that was the same one, I would have noticed it come back across the yard. Same size though. Could be siblings. Could be twins. I guess they’re all kind of like twins, aren’t they, because they all come out at the same time. Twins, triplets, quadruplets. There’s a word for this – littermates. Yes, littermates.

This is extremely stream of consciousness. You’re right along for the ride with me here. I can see all of these things from this window, and more, because I can see the feeder from here. And the lake. I should say, the feeder complex. I have been here for the various stages of this aviation feeding station’s development, and would say that we can now officially call this a complex, the most recent addition being an oval-shaped mulch patch with African Lillies, for the hummingbirds. They like those African Lillies. Here’s a photo, courtesy of the internet, of what they look like.

African Lily – Agapanthus africanus

In the last paragraph, I wrote, “oval-shaped”. When I wrote that sentence, I first wrote ovular, you know, like circular, or rectangular, but it immediately struck me as sus, and my intuition was correct. That word is already taken. For things related to ovules, of course. The English language is weird. The other day we were watching soccer and I said something like, “She’d just shotten the ball” and the parents stopped me and said, “Shotten??” Got, gotten, fine. Shot, shotten, no sir. Gotten is still alive in the common vernacular but doesn’t have to be used (I just got home, I’ve just gotten home), but it might go the same way as shotten, and die out someday. Because, I just did some Googling, it’s not that you can’t say shotten. It’s not incorrect, it’s just a dead word, listed by the dictionaries as obsolete. Once upon time it was used, if we can trust this nice graph from Collin’s Dictionary, some time in the 1700s, and who knows how much before then.

source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/shotten

Anyways, back to the African Lillies.. Ours are yellow and orange. They’re dainty things. So now we’ve got some of those below our feeders, of which we have four hanging from two metal poles, that are four feet high or so, and one hanging from a cottonwood next to the mulch oval. From one pole, there are three smaller feeders: one with the sugar water for the hummingbirds, with little fake flowers for them to stick their tiny beaks into, a standard one, we’ll just call it that because I can’t really tell what’s going on with it from this angle, but it looks similar to the feeder hanging from the cottonwood, which has a little ledge in front of it that the birds and the undesirables (the squirrels and the chipmunks) perch on and pull seeds out through a slit in the bottom, and then there is a sack of smaller seeds, with a thin sieve-like mesh skin, that is favored more by birds with skinnier breaks. I’m thinking that the nuthatch might go for this one, and speak of the angel, the nuthatch has just landed. The hummingbird has just shown up as well. It’s a whirlwind out here. At this moment, I can see these birds: a female cardinal, four, then six sparrows, a hummingbird, a nuthatch, a few geese, far off, and some other kind of sparrow, or maybe a chickadee. These guys n’ gals are out here partying every day. Attached to the sack is a small bowl with jelly for the orioles. They were around earlier in the summer, with the red-winged blackbirds. They’ve both gone away now. Hanging from the other pole is a massive multi-storied megafeeder. This is monopolized by the sparrows. There is currently a sparrow at every feeding port, and they’re fighting to keep it that way. The nuthatch keeps trying to get in there. He flies back and forth, looking for an angle, a way in. He finds it, or forces it, gets a few seeds, and is chased off. He’s my favorite of these birds, I have to say. Something about the way he hops and skips, the way he swivels his head, and pulls seeds out of the feeder with his long, sharp beak. He trawls the sides of the cottonwoods, poking and prodding, snapping juicy morsels up out of the cracks, and possibly hiding seeds. I read that birds do that, wedge seeds into the cracks of trees. He’s got a very pretty blue, grey, white, black coloration. A lot of personality in that bird. He could be a she, I actually don’t know. Another hummingbird has just shown up as well. It’s now confirmed that there are two hummingbirds around.

A lot of action going on down there, man. You could watch it all day, especially if you were a cat. From here would be great, but from our downstairs window, a large, three-paned window with a fullscreen view of the feeders. That view is every cat’s dream. Cat heaven. And Daisy heaven is looking at fish. It doesn’t take much, with them. I was sitting out on the deck in the rain yesterday, right under the ledge of the house. I was only being sprinkled on. It was a soft rain, the temperature was cool, but a very comfortable, perfect cool, not chilly, and with low wind. It was just quiet, but not unsettlingly quiet, not dead silent, just quiet, with only the gentle white noise pitter-patter of the drops, on wood, water, and leaves. And with the fresh scent in the air, the fresh scent of earth, of wet wood, of rainwater. Daisy was out with me, laying beside me near the steps, staring off into the distance, out between the large trunks of the cottonwoods, at the geese in the yard. I sat there, watching her, watching the ripples of the water on the surface of the lake, watching the sky, watching the geese, and in that moment, so full of calm, my senses so pleasantly stimulated, a little thought popped into my head, that this was heaven. It was a fleeting thought, really. But it was a solid one. I wasn’t out there for too long before I felt restless, and I didn’t stay. For that short time, though, I guess I had a little taste of it. A brush with the divine. And you know, it really doesn’t take much. It doesn’t take much, to be happy. And it doesn’t have to cost a dime.

Now it’s Monday. Enough talk about the birds and the wind and crap like that. Let’s get down to business.

The text prompt for this image was “Creatures from a phantasmagorical universe, Pastel Art, Beautiful Lighting, Warm Color Palette.” And this image was built in 22 steps. Last post looked at the effect of step count on image generation, and now we’ll talk about the effect of prompt text and seed number. First, the seed number. Like an actual plant, the seed is the basis for the image. How exactly it works I don’t know, but I can tell you that if you use the same seed for an image, even if they come out wildly different in the end because of all of the other parameters, they must have started the same way. So, if you generate an image twice, keeping all parameters the same, including with the same seed, you will have nearly the same image in the end. If you keep all parameters the same and change only the seed, you will have an entirely different image in the end. The seed for that first image, our experiment image, was 54445. Below are images generated with seeds 54446 and 54447, and otherwise the exact same parameters.

Seed: 54446 (Coral reef elephant??)
Seed: 54447

This means that you could download DiffusionBee, set all of the parameters to exactly what I had them as for these images, and you would get nearly the same thing. You don’t get exactly the same thing, because the algorithm that generates these is as they say in the biz, nondeterministic. (Also.. how freakin cool are these pictures. I think I could have a promising career as a Phantasmagorian AI Art Programmer. Wouldn’t that be fun to tell people.) It would be interesting to know what exactly a seed is in the code, how that works. I’m trying to think of what it could be, like a set of numbers or parameters that are related to the growth of the image. I generated three more images with totally different text prompts off of the same seed, to see if that would reveal anything about the seed. 1. “Gorilla in a top hat, by Vincent van Gogh”, 2. “a bowl of cereal, colored pencil, children’s drawing”, and 3. “Barack Obama riding a skateboard, 8-bit”.

Van Gogh Gorillas
Bowls of Cereal
Obamas Riding Skateboards

I can only really see one similarity between them. All of these images have multiples of the subject. I’ve wondered about that, because sometimes there are multiples, and sometimes not, and it doesn’t matter if you specify how many gorillas you want in the prompt text. That may be outside of the prompt’s control, and dependent only on the seed.

Now looking at the effect of prompt text. In the next image, I changed only one thing. In the prompt text, I changed “warm color palette” to “cool color palette”, and now you have an image that is in one way quite different, and yet similar. Take a gander.

Warm Color Palette vs. Cool Color Palette (slide the bar to compare images)

Many differences, and many similarities. You can see that the bones of the image are the same. That’s really where the seed is coming into play. The bones are the same, but the flavor, the details have changed. There is much more of a pronounced glow to the image, which I really love. The whole thing is glowing in mystical blue light. All of the flying fish are gone, and the firecat, the little glowing mushroom lamps, and the red sun in the upper right corner, gone as well. In the cool color palette, you have more detail in the background, less of a foreground (on the sides of the image), and now a really interesting scene at the bottom, with an incredible pink-purple boar creature, and a large, curly, pink monkey. There are new plants, and some yellow thing that my brain is interpreting as a butterfly. Would you expect such a different image just from asking the program to change the color scheme? I didn’t. I thought it would take the same image and just color it differently, but it’s much more than that. I had a lot of fun trying other color schemes and styles and seeing what popped out. Like the chocolates in a box of chocolates, you just don’t know what you’re going to get.

Colorful
Cold Color Palette
Electric
Green Color Palette
Green (without the words “Color Palette”)

They all have the same foundation, but the aesthetic is totally different. So how about changing something else, say, “Watercolor” instead of “Pastel Art”?

Pastel Art -> Watercolor

Amazing. So amazing. Look how the branches of the tree on the bottom right become the hair of the green rhino pokemon creature. The leg of the firecat becomes the leg of the dragon whatever. (I’m trying my best to describe these phantasm creatures to you. It’s hard, ok. I could make up names for them. The Wakkanok, the Schmerkelvitz.) The background just disappears and becomes stars, and the foreground is made of creatures, and colored gas. Now we really are out in the universe. I love it.

Warm Color Palette vs. Cold Color Palette

This one was “creatures in a phantasmagorian universe, Pastel Art, Cool Color Palette” but without “Beautiful Lighting”. That made a huge difference. I’ll take my beautiful lighting, please.

What if we change “universe” to “desert”?

Incredible.

Some of the best, here. On 10 steps, we could more creatures. I love the blurry, dreaminess of the watercolor.

Very cool. I’m really in love with these. You just never know what you’re going to get. So much to play with here, with DiffusionBee. This is a very simple program, no coding required, no importing models or anything. Also, they have AI video now, I’ve seen it. A full movie trailer, 30 seconds live action, apparently made with AI. Think of the implications. We could, potentially, the average person, easily generate hundreds of videos of penguins riding horses. Into battle, at the Kentucky derby, joyously through a meadow, along the beach. This is coming, this is the future. It’s exciting stuff.