A few days ago, in the early morning, as I held my newborn son, I happened to look out the window to see a man and his adult son each cut a mature agave attenuata from the succulent forest out front of the next door apartment building. Flora in hand, the men ran, guiltily, to their idling truck. They nestled the poached agaves amid landscaper tools and sped off. How strange to witness so small a crime, and how normal to wonder, Would I have done it too? My son stared intensely at the window frame, the delicious chiaroschurro.

Quit Twitter. While logging out I whispered, “Thank you.” It no longer sparked joy.

Gotta admit, I am curious how 10x my content production.

This is what I mean when I say I miss smoking cigarettes.

I will never understand why album art is almost impossible to see up close in Apple Music / Spotify. Take desktop: wouldn’t it be better to have less blank space in the table of song titles and more of the art? Took five minutes to make this look… 5x better?

Say the horse rapture actually happens. Seems inevitable we’ll pin manes and tails on cows and call it a horse show. “Did you go to the horse show? So fun. Such grace.”

When have the Republicans ever fielded so many compelling candidates?

10-year anniversary of finding this impromptu shopping list.

✅ bank

✅ lettuce

✅ condoms

Things looking dicey for E-David

Acne Elf: My chosen family aren’t ‘Orcs.’ We call ourselves ‘Orucs.’

Pretty Elf: I am going to kill every Orc. Full genocide.

Acne Elf (aside): I wish there was a giant erupting volcano right now.

Pretty Elf (aside): I am so gonna kiss that hot human guy later.

“The Creation of Man(nequin)”

SPOOKY SEASON

Two weeks ago I found Dropbox had downloaded 350GB of shared team projects to my comp. Today, found Apple Music downloaded over 100GB of music on my phone. Each time basically bricking the device. There has to be a better way.

This is a real horse-mill definition for what should be an exciting word.

Twitter—a haiku

contest in a middle school.

‘No, mine is better!’

Life with electric kettle. Learning its sounds. The cymballine tremble as it gets going. A long grumble. Then gathering quiet as it nears boiling. The abrupt, oceanic roar of a rolling boil—further crescendo—fortissimo—and, snick, the switch flicks off—decrescendo—silence.

Today, I “went for a run” but really jogged—first time since injuring my calf weeks ago. While out, I realized that jogging, with its trademark bounciness, is much harder on the calf than a kind of flat, hard run. So did that instead. Alas, it seems to be hard on the KNEES.

After a few weeks of posting daily, I find myself suddenly skeptical of microblogging. Who is this performance for, really? Are my talents at all suited to a form that feels more like stand-up than like writing? I’ll keep at it, I guess—but skeptically, skeptically.

“The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” My grandma loved this quote. I always thought it shortchanged lightning bugs. But it’s a good point—and applies to more than just words.

Every time I get into some new piece of software, I get curious about who is heading up building it. And each time it’s some messianic dude enthusing about how their tool (networked notes! a web browser!) is actually the key technology for the new paradigm, the next age.

“Hobbits didn’t exist in prehistoric Middle Earth. No. Instead...let’s see, useless nomads with random plant matter in hair? That’s right.” JRR Tolkein feels deeply certain that this is best invention yet. “And—they’re called—wait for it—oh yes. Har-Foots.”

“family time”

In my timid return to the blasted space that is Twitter, I keep being struck by how much the presence of an immediate audience (even of just 2-5) affects my writing. Consciously, I don’t care and intend to write whatever—but, in practice, I’m obsessed with being liked.

Just re-read @davekarpf’s great takedown of the big Bezos clock, with its “3.65 million unique chimes composed by musician Brian Eno.” How perfect that this warning against “longtermism” came out in January 2020 https://www.wired.com/story/the-10000-year-clock-is-a-waste-of-time/

I'm finally closing in on a personal salsa verde recipe. Will write about it in Lightplay, but two key realizations:

• Use ricer to separate tomatillos from skins.
• Use ground, toasted pepitas to balance tartness with earthy richness. (Shades of mole.)