The siren call to write a scene where your protagonist makes spaghetti, listens to the end of a baseball game on the radio, eats solo, then listens to a jazz record and sips whiskey.

Many a sloop has wrecked on the perilous shoals of Murakami.

Feeling affection for the 18-year-old who wrote this, justifying a briefly-updated blog.

Affection—and continuity of self.

It’s a pity that the most noted war criminal of my lifetime took “own feet at other end of bathtub” as his preferred genre. I’d as soon not think about him during my special bathtime.

West Hollywood, May 2023.

The distance between exposing a photo and seeing it in full resolution has been narrowing for two centuries. Yet outside of elaborate studio setups, the most photographers today can do is preview on a small screen and zoom in.

A potential “new thing” AR/VR headsets might do. For better/worse.

Re: 2015 travels in Tibet: The further I get from that trip, the more impressed I am by the photos from it, all taken on a standard-issue iPhone 5. I had so much fun with that camera.

I re-did the Lightplay archives so each entry has a hyperlinked cover image. In doing so, I realized one of my 2015 travelogues from south-eastern Tibet never got posted. So I tracked it down, added it, and sure felt a pang of missing that corner of the world.

The scariest words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to decide what you can and cannot do with your body.

Santa Monica, May 2023

Schadenfreude, n., pleasure derived from another’s misfortune.

__________, n., relief derived from the decline of a social media platform where you never developed a following.

Sitedeklinenrelief?

Today in megalomania: Who is the American Bohumil Hrabal? Could I?

Just re-installed Webster’s 1913 onto the MacOS dictionary app—and it continues to absolutely rip. (Somehow my previous install had broken.) Thanks @craigmod@mastodon.social for the last-mile work of getting this out-of-copyright masterpiece into an app where one actually, constantly uses it.

West Hollywood, April 2023

West Hollywood, May 2023

San Pedro, May 2023

Jeet Heer in his rebuke of Harvard’s slavering embrace of post-conviction Jeffrey Epstein:

The modern neoliberal university is a shark that must constantly consume donations in order to stay alive.

The only rocket ship I want is a rowboat full of arugula.

Great article on dark online patterns that trick you into not unsubscribing. I always thought my online literacy protected me—that dark patterns, awful for others, were merely a hassle for me. But last year, after I “unsubscribed,” the Wall Street Journal took me for over $300.

Tired: conspicuous consumption

Wired: conspicuous consumption of the commons

A chicken covering “Work” by Rihanna.

(Am I telling on myself as a millennial with this joke? (Am I double-telling with this (these!) meta-concerns?))

West Hollywood

Western Canon

My father once told me his favorite tombstone inscription:

What I am you shall become.

Sort of the opposite of Neil Young telling his old man to take a look at his life and see how “I’m a lot like you were.”

Ah, our fleeting numbered days, our many ephemeral returns!

Undoubtedly the best thing among many good things here are the simply enormous hands. But also: the silhouette resembling a twirly tutu. And of course the idea of such a card being used for “trading”. No notes, you can find me on Truth Social eight days a week baby.

Introverts.