I talk a bit about how to gain momentum as a content creator. The key I think is to have a good idea of your format. So if you’re a talk-show, vlog, or reporter: ask and answer good questions. Knowing simple things like this will help overcome the psychological hurdle of ‘is it good enough?’ Which too often leads to ‘why bother?’ Go forth and create!
Pictures and these memories will turn to dust,
All these pictures and all these memories will turn to dust.
…and yet the stars are made of such a thing and so I still trust…
…and yet the stars are made of such a thing and so I can still trust…
Animate
Inaminate
Animate
Inanimate
These pillars dual
Are guards attending
In a formation perpetual
Whether we’re pretending
With information in our head
Or are proceeding in formation
Towards wherever the gardens led
That’s the operation
And I no longer fear
Because the stars likewise are made of dust
Yes, I see this very clear
In death, in life, in eternity I trust
Image Source: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/361719/Aliens-are-out-there-Scientists-find-water-in-stardust-that-can-create-life-anywhere
1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe
1.2 The Cajun Prayer
1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)
1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)
1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’
1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’
1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’
1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’
1.9 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.9 – ‘Precedent’
2.0 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 2.0 -Calvinist Neuroses
It was the doctor’s turn to laugh. “Well, Jesse, I see your love of Shakespeare has paid off. That was pretty damned dramatic.”
The big oaf was momentarily embarrassed dawdling at the threshold.
Then a fresh burst of zeal overtook him and he rushed into the light of the fire.
“These, what are ya doin with these…”
“These what Mr. Jessup?” Doctor Pearce inquired cooly.
“These!…Devil worshipers…”
The word hung awkwardly on the air before the whole room erupted in raucous laughter. The boy’s face did bear some evidence of intelligence but his rustic accent and protestant zeal were too much for composure.
“I saw you, I saw you out in the woods, actin actin like like warlocks, don’t deny it, there ain’t no use, ain’t no laughin where you’re goin…”
We redoubled our laughter. The way that lanky Graham’s clothes straight-jacketed the brawny youth’s broad shoulders made his rustic preachments doubly funny.
“You claim that we are witches, Inquisitor!?” I said in a comically arcane English accent.
“No one expects the Yokel Inquisition!” Lucas caught on to the Pythonism.
Jesse Mitchum’s embarrassment was creeping back into his wholesome, square-jawed, features.
“You know Jesse, in your defense, I’d believe they’re witches quicker than what they really are.”
“What are ya’ll doin’ out here! You’re just like old Luckadoo’s kin, wicked, wicked to the core…!”
“They’re soldiers, Jesse, defending America…with better life through chemistry.” The doctor announced with his characteristic acerbic sarcasm.
I was beginning to get curious, we rarely ventured far into the woods, and our voodoo themed ayahuasca trips were held in a root cellar. The lad struck me as a typical Methodist teetotaler and I doubted highly he was given to hallucinations. He must have seen something.
“Jesse,” I said, “I think that’s your name, so, Jesse, I promise you that we are way too fond of lattes and craft beer to venture too far out into these hills. Whatever you saw wasn’t us. Though I’m as curious, as the hell that you’re promising me, as to what you saw exactly.”
Our unexpected guest relaxed a little and seemed to enjoy the respect in my voice. Pearce had mentioned something to him about his study of Shakespeare. I was dealing with a budding thespian.
“Well..” He began.
I held up my hand. “Take a seat, get comfortable, do you want something to drink? I bet you’re wanting something warm?”
“Ya’ll wouldn’t happen to have some Cocoa?”
“O Graham has plenty of Cocoa.” Sam quipped as he did a pantomime noseful.
I had forgotten about Graham in all of the excitement. He hadn’t said a word since his French exchange with Officer Fabre. The traces of that sardonic smirk still played in curlicues round the corners of his mouth. His eyes were distant and unpleasantly cold, mocking even…
I got up to fetch the cocoa partly cause Chuk had fallen asleep and I was the backup chef, and partly to dispel the serious dose of heeby-jeebies that I’d just gotten off of Graham Hoyt.
I wasn’t spooked easily. And while I’m not an atheist, my outlook on cosmic matters is so spartan and empirical that I wouldn’t blame a body for thinking that I was. There was something about that look, and the whole atmosphere around Hoyt, the suddenness of the shift from his vivacious Etruscan chattiness to this brooding haughtiness, that reached down into my guts and broke my skin out in goosebumps.
While I was getting the powder from the cabinet above the microwave I felt a command.
Look out the window.
It was very stern. It was impossible to resist the compulsion. I looked and I froze.
There out beyond the dock in the midst of the cold mountain lake were lights. Fantastic lights of various hues, violet, green, crimson, deep blue. They appeared as orbs glowing with a ferocious luminosity and doing a sort of rhythmic rearrangement round some spot. There was a strong sense of intelligence and intent.
“Hey, hey Baird, hey what’s taking so long…. I’m keen to hear what this yahoo has to say.”
I couldn’t look away or say anything.
“Hey!”
I managed to mumble with a slurred sort of awe, past whatever was keeping my jaw from working, like speaking through a straw… “Look, there…”
For some reason, it was damnably difficult to get my arm to move so I could point.
Schmidt slapped me on the back. “You gotta cool it with the boozin man, you’re slurring like a motherfucker.”
This brought me back into a fuller control of my faculties.
“Hey, hey! Look out the damned window asshole!” I yelled.
There was a pause.
“Uh…at what…”
“Don’t you see the lights…”
But there was nothing but darkness now.
“Have you been microdosing again?”
“No, holy shit, you can’t tell me you didn’t see that…”
“Dude, my last liver workup looked like a Merck catalog, I see shit all the time. But there’s nothing out there but owl shit and darkness at the moment. I promise you.”
“Well fuck…”
“You alright man?”
“Yea, yea,” I said as I put the milk in a clumsily rinsed kettle.
This little verbose atrocity seems to be what got the gears rolling for the ‘Post Grunge Punks’ idea. It was in an old sketchpad filled with stuff from various years. This was pretty recent though. March 2017, which is odd because normally things feel like they move too quick but this seems like it was forever ago.
Tile One – Narrator: What they think when I ask for better vocabulary and a more mature wardrobe…
Posh Life Guy: “We have gathered on this occasion for levity. It is our aim to erupt in raccous laughter upon hearing a humorous quip.
Tile Two – Narrator: All I want is an improvement to THIS
Doushy 0′ Toole – (Wearing a T-shirt that says 84 hrs of Gaming) “Dude…”
Alan (Wearing a T-shirt that says Smelly Tee, because smelly T’s are the uniform of the early twenties douche.) “Like… yea….”
Tile Three: Narrator – Which would…
Alan: (Wearing a sensible button up and having discovered a razor) ” Why did we spend the last two decades trying to be Kurt Cobain? Hardy 1920’s farmer Cur with an entrepreneurial bent. Spiritual but grounded, we care but we don’t, because static…..”
Doushy O’ Toole: (Also wearing a sensible button up and looking uncannily like Thom Yorke) “A resource-rich nation creates a false sense of success, leading to a perpetual feeling of phony uselessness, that manifests as quirky bullshit. (Holy Shit. I’m Thom Yorke. )”
So basically I’m just slapping people with social commentary, right in the face, with no regard for subtlety. O well.
In the romantic month of February….I commit to Linux!
Sort of an impromptu brought about by my geeky reading from earlier in the day.
Linux has many advantages (security, freedom, customizability, etc.) leaving very few (if any) reasons to stay with Microsoft or Apple.
Feel free to share your thoughts on the matter and as always don’t take my word for it.
Here’s a few links:
Ok, so they’re all pro linux, but I’m on my honeymoon so AMORE!
Here’s a great video on the state of internet freedom and quality along with a great product under development to help ensure secure transactions that reward merit (if all goes well)
– Brendan Eich (JavaScript creator, launching Brave Browser) on The Lunduke Show –
Any old paper will do
A scribble or typeface is equally true
As a nod unto firmament
Or some bittersweet heart’s lament
To write is to sing
To speak is to breathe
Giving souls a wing
And nerves reprieve
How cheap is the pleasure
Of such a great treasure
A pen and a paper you pulled from the refuse
Gift worthy of the most beautiful muse
1.1 (Intro) The Sketch of Sam Monroe
1.2 The Cajun Prayer
1.3 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter One: The Cambridge Gable Scene (‘Gator is Waitin’)
1.4 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.4 – The Cambridge Gable Scene – (Horticulture)
1.5 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.5: ‘To Luckadoo Cove’
1.6 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.6 – ‘Is there anybody out there…’
1.7 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.7: ‘Jesse’
1.8 The Sketch of Sam Monroe – Chapter 1.8: ‘Lungful of Bees’
The giant was really taking his sweet time. I wasn’t worried. There was no way out except to pass my line of sight. My lazyboy was pointed to provide ample view of the stairwell.
We were all a bit surprised to hear Cameron’s name.
The fire crackled and lit tense faces.
“You do me a disservice doctor.”
“O?”
“Yes, I’m not Presbyterian.”
“Come again?”
“Calvinists…predermination..that’s really not my cuppa tea.”
“I don’t really follow…”
“Strenght and Beauty…not a bad little book…but quite ripe for perversion…”
The doctor was completely lost.
“Cameron’s father was a Presbyterian minister, there’s a wee book by another fellow of that denomination called Strength and Beauty.”
“I thought Cameron was Canadian. Catholic.”
“Scottish actually. It’s the experiments that took place in Canada.” I paused searching my mind for the name behind the book I’d just mentioned.
“…ooo that’s right the fellows name was Miller..JR..or JD something to that effect, anyway I quite fancy the thing, good advice, very elegant and cheery…but all throughout there’s that sneaky nordic sternness, a bit imbecilic, in fact I think Nietzsche called it out quite well, it is a beersoaked contentment, volkish, daft, ponderous, German…”
“Cameron hated the Germans.”
“Yes, which I always found to be most amusing given how Teutonic a flavor his weltanschauung held.”
“I’m lost.”
“Well, the fellow had a very bizarre sort of idea of normalcy. That there were the ‘strong healthy types’ suited for industrial societies and then there were the ‘weak and maladapted’… most markedly displaying themselves in the German populace, via aggression and the neurosis of xenophobia. It was a wonderfully Celtic inversion of Hitler’s idea. We’re the master race! No lad! You’re the Jews!”
I chuckled a bit. “Yes, it would all be quite funny if he weren’t handed so much money and authority out where the Mounties roam….O My God the women in Montreal…anyway…he was very strong on the idea that everything was biological and that psychiatry should take a disciplinary approach. This led to those infamous incidents at Allan Memorial. Though honestly I’m surprised you’d heard of it.”
“You’d be surprised by a lot of the things I’ve heard.”
“Doubtless, doctor, doubtless. But yes we’re not doing anything of the sort here and I find the guilt by association offensive. Just because my last name is Scottish… Cameron was nothing but a simple-minded euphemism of a lobotomist living out Calvinist neurosis.”
“Calvinist neurosis?”
“Aye, think about…predetermination.. you are born damned or saved…you are born fit or unfit…your brain shape and chemistry making you either healthy or unhealthy…very little room for nuance…no free will…simply automata that must be repaired by the healthy…of course the healthy are the ones that view the world this way…which is…” I burst out laughing. “So profoundly daft that it makes me believe in God, because only the hand of something so grandiose could make creatures capable of such folly.”
No sooner had my fit of mirth ended then I noted a large frame at the bottom of the stairs.
The giant’s shoulders drooped and he was still miserable from my little tactical measure.
“How dare ya tak bout the Lord…” He said in a low voice.
In this little impromptu, I talk about the subject of water and how I became interested in it through not only E.O. Wilson’s excellent book consilience but a very colorful high school Earth science teacher.
This topic segues into a brief chat on wiser resource and energy practice where I present some fancy NASA designed insulation I just had installed at my home and describe how such incremental changes will form the bedrock of a sustainable society.
Sorry about the phone ringing in the middle and the lack of editing. I’m experiencing some software issues. Thanks for stopping by.
Check out my book in progress: https://fractaljournal.com/2017/10/28/forever-fluid-the-strange-case-of-renewable-limits/
Yellow Blue – https://yellowbluetech.com/products-technologies/multi-layer-insulation/
Consilience – https://www.amazon.com/Consilience-Knowledge-Edward-Osborne-Wilson/dp/067976867X
Vice India/Water Documentary – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkBoVfkOWqQ
Porous Cities – https://www.asla.org/2016studentawards/184035.html
The views espoused above do not necessarily mirror my own. I just feel that these links will give you a good idea of some key concepts. I always encourage critical thinking.
Drops against my window
On a Wednesday Afternoon
All came in a neat row
Neither slow nor soon
As I lay dreaming
My limbs drank in their soothing sound
Carrying a meaning
Of times and spaces more profound
For all is water
All was always so
Since Eve’s first daughter
Watched its ebb and flow
There is motion
There is meaning
In the ocean
Of my dreaming
As the patter on the window
Does with every moment grow
Like the trees that lined the garden
Long ago
There is only memory and pardon
In the winter drizzle
I now know
The Fractal Journal 