Mrs. Black

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

In grade 10, I had a old crotchety English Teacher. A real old school battleaxe. She had a legendary reputation for being an intolerable disciplinarian. Angry, weathered with age, simmering with intenity. Think a female Gene Hackman. Not him playing Royal Tenenbaum, more from one of his Westerns, or that tense Will Smith movie. Charismatic, uncompromising, and ready to explode at the slightest hint of incompetence, idiocy or ignorance.

Anyway, she had a hard rule about writing papers for her class. All writing absolutely had to be done on paper. No word processor computer bullshit. Lined paper. Write that shit out. You better think beforehand what you want to say, because you aren’t fixing it in post. Pen on lined paper. Delete and backspace don’t exist in my world. Don’t like it? Tough shit. We do it my way.

I think this came to mind because I am in bed and am restless. 2am. I’m in a pitch dark room, laying awake next to my peacefully sleeping wife and I have insomnia. I grew tired of scrolling social media in that endless open ended stream of shitty dopamine micro doses. So I opened this blog. Typing on this hateful little on-screen keyboard. Stream of consciousness, no plan, editing on the fly. The antithesis of everything Mrs. Black taught us. RIP to a real one. I think Im tired enough now. Goodnight.

Hot Pockets

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

It has been a difficult adjustment stepping away from my career…

…immediately after writing that, Jim Gaffigan’s falsetto inner voice rang out in my head: Taking early retirement in his forties? What a nightmare right? Look at Mr. Humble over here, complaining about having nothing but free time.

What I mean by difficult, is not real struggle, but it has still been a surprisingly challenging adjustment. Way to make yourself sound like a stressed man of the people! Wow, you are soooo empathetic! (looks like Gaffigan’s mocking voice is riding shotgun for this entire post.)

There are the awkward social interactions, like when people ask, “what do you do?” or when older people state they’re x years away from retirement. That’s not the challenging part though. It’s handling unstructured free time. Seriously, this asshole is complaining about free time?

When I was grinding, trying to forge a successful career, there never seemed to be enough time. It didn’t feel like I was totally in control of my life. So often, just managing to take care of critical obligations. Wake up at ass o’clock, pick out clothes, shower, commute to work, frantically plan the day, ready presentations, meetings and experiments before the office got busy. Giving all my best energy and effort to my employer. Come home. Try to summon the will to workout. Find comfort with my significant other in a low energy state. This left such small amounts of time and energy. A tiny window to do anything else. Welcome to being an adult, buddy.

After a couple decades of work you start to fantasize about retirement. All the things you would do with all that free time. How you’ll be able to pursue personal fulfillment unfettered. You’ll write in your blog, or finish a novel. Workout religiously. All the travel, gardening, woodwork, learn a foreign language, expand your social network, take up a sport, etc etc etc. It will make all the sacrifice now so worth it.

In reality, I’ve had a real hard time managing that open time. Now that Claw and I are settled into what we hope is our forever home, don’t you mean the “until you die house?” so many of my days just fritter away. I have a whiteboard full of tasks I truly want to do. I want survey and manage the small forest on my property, I want to grow mushrooms, garden. I want to paint the bedroom, repair shit. All the other stuff I would daydream about while still working.

Without the pressure of my career, (and having a wonderful permissive, kind wife like Claw), I just have such a hard time getting daily momentum. So many days I wake up, screw around on the internet or phone until 11:30am. Claw works from home, so I’ll make her lunch (of course it’s the least I can do). I’ll have my lunch. Maybe then I’ll finally get my workout done. Shower get dressed. Then it’s late afternoon and why start something so late in the day? Claw will be off work soon then we can eat and watch TV and movies. I’ll just have a nap with the cats instead. Fuck. I don’t need a Gaffigan inner voice to tell me how shameful and slothful that is, my inner voice does just fine.

There has been hope lately though. I made a small change that has reduced the amount of attention theft that the algorithms perpetrate. A significant victory in blocking out the social media “smart fog”. Okay, let’s hear this miracle solution, Einstein.

All I have done, is pledged to myself to not use my phone as anything more than a clock until I get my workout done in the morning. That’s it? That’s it. And it’s working. It’s the only thing that has worked so far.

I’m really trying to make it a long term habit. I know momentum is critically important for me. When I have positive momentum, I can be such a dynamo. When I have negative momentum, I am the MVP of sloth. On days when I get up and workout right away, those tend to be the satisfying days that fulfill the promise and hope I had for retirement. It works because I get bored quickly, and have nothing else to do but weightlift. After that I shower, get dressed and naturally just flow into the day. Geez, with this amazing insight, why don’t you write a self-help book about this? We have the next Tony Robbins over here. You can call it “The Subtle Art of Not Touching Your Phone” Such a brilliant insight!

I think my inner voice is meaner than Gaffigan’s.

Comic Judgement

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

Out of boredom I posted my bookshelf to r/BookshelvesDetective on Reddit.

That’s a sub where you post an image of your (or someone else’s) bookshelf. Then people take guesses at who you are. Many posts are people trying to get insight on the person they are dating. Sometimes the guesses are weirdly specific, and correct.

So I took a few pics of my bookshelf (Claw has her own in her office), and created a burner reddit account with no identifiable information and gave it the post title “Who is he?”

The Comments (I didn’t respond to any of these on Reddit, but will here (italics) in the private darkness of my blog):

  • Nerd (kind).
  • To quote the poet Donald Gibb, “nerd, nerd, nerd, nerd.”
  • He’s a comic book nerd – Charlie Stross & Maus are green flags.

Yes yes, nerdy taste. I obviously enjoy sci-fi, fantasy and comic books. The spirit of these comments seems positive. Ie. He’s a harmless nerd and probably won’t be an abusive asshole if you date him.

• He’s also organized – my kids don’t have their books in any organized fashion – so he’s giving off mild collector vibes – I didn’t see a lot (or any) plastic sleeves – correction – went back, saw sleeves – but they also looked gently used so maybe I’m guessing living life and enjoying art is more important to him than possessing things – if that feeling extends to his romantic interests, another green flag ?

This was one of the more insightful comments. I do collect more for the utility and pleasure of reading. The ability to share my comics and books than any investment angle. I suppose that generally applies to life too. I have mercilessly culled so many Funko pops and other collectible detritus. I think about the paraphrased line, “The things we own, end up owning us”, all the time.

  • Blankets is also a green flag in my book
  • so is Once & Future
  • Bone is a green flag too. Watchmen is a beige flag but in absence of reds we should assume green.
  • He’s a total nerd but Blankets indicates a heart beneath

That last one made me feel warm. 🙂

• First thought was “this guy seems cool as hell.” Then I thought “I think this is my ex.”

I highly doubt it.

• I’m willing to bet he has a beard.

Yes.

  • Becky Chambers is awesome, so another green flag.
  • agreed, thought that was hot
  • Cool as hell

Redditors predictably love Becky Chambers. That Wayfarers series is good.

  • A comic lover. Though that Terry Goodkind novel is looking pretty sus.
  • I’m not familiar with Terry Goodkind, what’s wrong with him?
  • Daniel Greene did a really good video explaining why. It’s his argument, but I can’t summarise everything on a single reddit comment.
  • I’ll check it out, thanks
  • at the very least he only has one (and its the first). If he only could endure (or didnt finish) that one, i’d say that is positive
  • Yeah, he should probably ditch that one.
  • Both Terry’s on the shelf looking not great, everything else is pretty good though

I wasn’t aware Terry Goodkind was controversial. I read Wizard’s First Rule in high school after my Robert Jordan phase. I just kind of breezed through it, enjoyed it at the time, but didn’t care enough to continue. I remember it was pretty similar to the Wheel of Time, but with some kinky bondage/torture stuff near the end. Claw also makes fun of me for the Terry Brooks books. I only read the first one. Yes, I acknowledge it’s not high quality writing, but I don’t remember it being awful either. She told me that when we were first dating she loved my bookshelf, but Sword of Shannara was the one that made her raise an eyebrow.

  • I was going to say a man who should read Fables but no it’s right there.
  • You should get him Bone by Jeff Smith of his birthday is coming up.
  • It’s on the same shelf as fables

I have such a soft spot for Bone that one of the characters, Roque Ja, is the mascot of this blog, and is the basis for the main image I use for it.

• The lack of Brian K Vaughn is a red flag and you can tell him I said that.

I’ve read some of Y The Last Man on my kindle. Haven’t tackled Dune though.

  • Rich (literally some of those comics are old as heck) well diversified nerd
  • I could give him a list of comic recs a mile long. Seems chill.
  • I’ve never seen comics stored this way. This lad is an innovator.
  • Why aren’t his graphics novels organized by volume number?

My collection isn’t worth much, I collected mainly in the early to late nineties. Like sports cards, there were a lot of copies printed of most of my comics. The ones I have showing on the edge are the oldest ones.

• millennial nerdy guy with a dog.

Swing and a miss. Gen X with two cats.

  • It really bothers me that his The Walking Dead books are out of order
  • I would say overweight, not well groomed, bad clothes, smells weird. Has a beard but not a well kept one. Neck beard is on the table but not guaranteed. Very passionate about trivial things.

Oof! Well, I think my beard is very nicely groomed. I shave my neck, have defined edges. After a shower I put on moisturizer, then soften it up a 50:50 mix of Jojoba oil (which I know to pronounce with a soft J) and Argan oil. Then i finish it off with a high quality beard balm and special scissors to trim any stray hairs. Then I go about my day with a groomed, magnificent looking, salt and pepper beard. I’m in good shape and smell pleasant too. And if I cared so much about trivial things, then why are my Walking Dead Graphic Novels all out of order then? hmmmm? What a meanie.

  • Lethem and Vonnegut hanging out together under a couple Chambers novels screams green flag go to me. Nerdy dude. Probably some anxiety issues (why? No idea, just got that vibe.)
  • I’m guessing 40-45 white male with a middle to upper middle class job where he works with his brain a bit more than with his hands.

Yes, these were close. Anxiety is probably a little above the mean. Slightly older than that age range, career in Science.

So… yeah that was kind of fun. Kind of hurtful. I do now mostly just read on my kindle, so the bookshelf is a bit of a snapshot of a younger version of me. A little library shrine.

Debbie Downer

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

It’s March 2026 now. 11:31pm and it’s quiet in my house. Claw in bed, everything off save the little light in this dim ground floor office. Typing slowly and quietly. I’m not feeling particularly articulate right now, just restless in a low energy, low glutamate, sober, bored state. I took two sleeping pills, they should kick in pretty soon, if not already.

How are you doing? Do you feel that low level sense of dread that I do? It never used to be there. Not like this. It’s persistent dread for all of us. Doesn’t it feel like we’re all treading water, but our muscles are getting tired? How does this tension break? You can feel that the break is coming soon too right? Something awful feels imminent.

Is it going to be the AI bubble popping, coinciding with massive loss of wealth and employment? Financial hardship and pain across the board. Is WW3 going to be triggered? Is someone going to launch a nuke? Is it going to be an unforseen environment catastrophe? Or maybe a foreseen one, like rapidly crossing multiple climate change tipping points. Ecosystem collapse? Civil war? Aliens? Skynet?

Or is the quiet desperation just going to continue. A long steady, shitty decline where more people have less and less, and a lucky few disproportionately take more and more. No rebellion, no break, just slow descent into dictatorship, oligarchy and poverty for the masses.

Are benevolent AI robots our only hope?

Tom Bradycardia

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

Claw and I had to get a new doctor since we live in Canada now. We haven’t registered into the Canadian system yet, and still have health insurance in the USA. So last week, we crossed the border into northern Minnesota to get our first annual physical with a new primary care physician.

At the appointment, the nurse did the standard things. Blood pressure, heart rate, questionnaire. She had trouble with my heart rate, measuring it twice. Apparently it was low. When the doctor came in, she wanted to check my heart rate too. She confirmed it was low. She asked if I’ve ever had an EKG.

There’s never really been a time in my life where I’ve paid attention to my heart rate. Not to say I don’t find it interesting. On the contrary, a couple of my favourite scientific articles are about how well the total number of heart beats in a lifetime predict life expectancy across mammals of all sorts of size better than chronological age (Levine 1997).

Isn’t that a cool result? All these different mammals have very different heart rates (15 bpm for whale, 600 bpm for mouse) and life expectancies (40 years for whale, 2 years for mouse), yet all have roughly the same amount of total heartbeats throughout their lifetime. If you are a mammal, you get about 10 billion heart beats and that’s it. It’s a better predictor of how much life you get than chronological time. Human is a little bit of an outlier, likely due to modern medicine squeezing out another half-log of heartbeats, but it’s a real finding. Your life is measured in heartbeats, not time. When it comes to life expectancy, the heart is the undisputed MVP organ.

To use an expression I hate, this knowledge lives rent-free in my head. I’ve carried a small but persistent sense of dread that the things I have done throughout my career and as a student have shortened my life. The copious amounts of coffee, red bull and other stimulants I’ve leaned on to power up and manically charge through all obstacles and competition have spent way too many precious heart beats. Additionally, I’ve always had a hunch my heart was naturally too quick. That even without the stimulants, my heart would give out unnaturally early.

So what’s a normal resting rate for a human? For a healthy Brazilian male, (which I am not), it’s 64 beats per minute. (According to the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (Dantas, Milll et al. 2017)

So how low was my resting heart rate at the clinic?

43-48 bpm. I just looked down at the Apple watch I’m borrowing from Claw, 47 bpm as I write. That’s low. So low, the EKG function on the watch doesn’t even work.

I found another source stating that mean resting heart rates are 61.4 with a standard deviation of 3.7. If that’s true it looks like I’m something like 4 standard deviations away from the mean. That’s so much of an outlier, it’s hard to believe.

After talking with the doctor, some things in the past started to click. At an urgent care facility about 10 years ago, they gave me an EKG when I just had a muscle spasm. I thought they were just ruling out a heart attack, even though I was in my thirties at the time and decently healthy.

A few years ago, I had a kidney stone that was broken up with lithotripsy. Afterwards, because the pain was unbelievable, we went to an ER to verify everything was ok (it was, I was just in agony). Claw recently told me that after they hooked me up to the heart monitor, a crowd of nurses and medical personnel gathered around it just to observe and watch my slow heart rate (I was out of it, not paying attention and had no idea).

Since the appointment last week, I have been wearing Claw’s Apple watch because it has heart monitoring functions. The doctor suggested it to gather data. Just checked again. 44 bpm. Fuck me, I have an elephant heart.

So I have a very slow heart. the medical term for it is Bradycardia. In my case it doesn’t seem to be a problem.

There weren’t any clues. I truly had no idea. I’m still having a hard time accepting that it’s unusual. I eat like shit, sugar and junk food binges. I’m kind of athletic, but not really. I try to exercise my way out of a crap diet, living by the terrible motto, “If the fire burns hot enough, you can eat anything”. Even so, I’m definitely not a super athlete or anything. I don’t do any cardio, although I do workout 5 out of 7 days. Nothing nuts, just 30 minutes of not particularly strenuous weightlifting. When I weightlift, my heart has no problem powering up to over 160 bpm.

Anyways, I’m fascinated and weirdly proud of this. I have a lower bpm than an athlete half my age. In the dark part of my mind, I thought I had an abused rabbit heart that was fast wearing out. Instead I’m a sea turtle, very slowly creeping towards the finish line. So much of our life is the product of random uncontrollable circumstances. I’m thankful that of all things to be an extreme outlier on, this is it.

2026

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

It is dark. It is cold. And it is ass o’clock in the morning (I believe Webster’s defines ass o’clock as any time before 6am). It is also Saturday and I had a hankering to visit the old vanity blog and groggily peck out a life update. I was prompted to, after seeing this headline on boingboing.net: The internet isn’t just shortening your attention span — it’s dissolving your identity Whoa! My identity? Fuck me. It doesn’t even matter what’s in the article. You read a headline like that while lying in bed in the silent, ass o’clock darkness, how could I not go make a gremlin green Matcha tea, quietly creep to my office, blow the crystalline dust off this digital tome, and proclaim before my personal shrine, “I still have an identity! I can still generate my own words!”

So my last check-in was late November. To mark my first 2026 entry, let’s recall notable things since then.

We attended a December wedding in upstate NY. We definitely had a fun table at the reception. I danced, got drunk and had a great time. Later at the hotel in the wee hours (ass o’clock, if you will), I vomited four Guinness’s and the other lightly digested contents of my stomach onto the bathroom floor. We drove to Toronto and flew home the next day.

I bought a boat. Not a big fancy, expensive one. More like the Toyota Rav4 of boats. Ubiquitous, nice, boring but functional. A small 14 foot fishing boat and trailer. I am excited to take this out on little fishing adventures with friends and family. My dad was very excited after hearing I bought it. I’m hopeful we can have some good times on that boat. He is still in his early retirement years, and has been far too housebound. It’s tragic to live in Northwestern Ontario, and not enjoy the wildlife here. It’s one of the more unspoiled wild areas of the world.

Thanksgiving (in Illinois) and Christmas/New Year’s (in T.Bay) happened. Very smooth this year. It was as if all the ordinance had previously exploded, and we were just enjoying the rituals in a more low-key comfortable way. The Trump loving in-laws avoided all things political and Claw and I abided in a similar way. Xmas was also smaller and easy. We watched The Holdovers with my parents, aunt, and cousin. Perfect family Christmas movie (Likewise Bugonia was the perfect New Year’s Eve movie).

We’re currently in our yearly push to watch all the Oscar nominated films. Everything we’ve seen in the International category has been stellar. As like last year, there is more substance and quality in that category (and best Animated Film) than in the Best Picture category. I’m totally tempted to write a satisfying pretentious rant on this right now, but let’s keep some structure and discipline here. Life updates it is….

Did a bit of home improvement. We fleshed out house decorating with the purchase of a painting from my favourite sister-in-law. It’s a white tiger. We put it up in a very prominent location in our main room. I also put up a big beautiful owl painting (made by my talented, blood related, estranged, asshole sister). If I’m fair, it’s the best quality painting we have, but currently, I view her art kind of like something by Adolf Hitler or John Wayne Gacy – historically important, even if made by a monster. Complimenting these are some classic/classy water paintings made by my great grandmother. Did some other homeowner stuff. Replaced all the old thermostats, the sauna I had ordered 6 months ago finally was installed and wired up.

What else… after many months of abstinence, had a 10 day cannabis binge that I recently just came out of. Insomnia has always been my main THC withdrawal symptom. Probably has something to do with waking up at “ass” this morning.

I got into fancy tea and smoothies, Claw got into bread making. I’m still working on my chess game, still playing Magic the Gathering. Currently reading the Berserk manga on my Kindle. Started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 again, this time with hundreds of mods installed. Claw rolls her eyes at the mods that make the ladies of Faerûn more scantily clad and chesty, but I really appreciate that she lets me enjoy my video game cheesecake (even though she might tease me for it during breaks from reading or doing Duolingo on the couch).

Did some tinkering with offline AI models. There are open source LLMs and image generators that you can download and run locally if you have a good GPU. So I did that, and it was pretty fun to be able to generate text and images beyond the eyes of a corporate content nanny. Then the novelty wore off. There is an ickiness to AI. I was left with a disturbing foreboding feeling about the future. It’s hard to shake the notion that imperfect fleshy meat computers are an endangered species.

So, existential AI dread aside, really the state of the union is good. I can recognize that this is an enjoyable time of my life, maybe one of the best. I’m trying to maintain good physical health, find and enjoy the things that make me happy.

Landman

Ancient Undergrad1 Comment

Do you remember the desert scene in Terminator 2? The one where Sarah Connor is looking over from a distance at the Terminator and John. Her poignant voice over kicks in about how an AI machine is the best possible father. That it would always be there for John, the only one that measures up.

Well I did something Saturday night that gave me that same profound feeling, and it has been dominating my thoughts ever since.

It was on the heels of a fun day spent out with my wife, Claw. We had walked around the harbour playing Pokemon Go, wandered and shopped at a few places, bought some eggnog and a freshly baked baguette. Came home and had a lovely evening fueled by Camembert cheese, fancy crackers, bread, coconut shrimp and rum infused eggnog. It was lovely.

So I was sitting on the couch late that night, Claw in bed (I have very recently just ended my one and a half year personal coffee moratorium, so I was still wired at midnight.), and was thinking about my previous two blog posts. Also on my mind, was an article I read earlier about how Google’s newly updated large language model, Gemini 3, is scoring better on AI performance metrics than chatGPT. I have a pro subscription to Gemini (they give, or were giving them out for free if you have an .edu email address).

I decided on a whim to tell Gemini 3 to go read my blog and give me feedback.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to think of this, but I also know that not many people have a treasure trove of digital personal writing that spans over twenty years.

Initially Gemini just read the last few posts and gave me some meaningful perspective and feedback. Nothing mind blowing, but I was pretty impressed, and it felt good. Back in the hayday of personal blogs Xanga/Myspace etc, the internet felt more personal. The algorithms weren’t in charge yet, and it was more like digital neighbourhoods. People would read your latest blog entry, leave a little comment, and you would do the same for them. I had a curated list of 20-30 people that I liked and subscribed to, and tried to return comments when I could. It was a double edged sword though. It made my writing feel more performative for others, and not as pure as writing for me. Now, in the empty vacuum that is the state of this blog in 2025, the writing is more pure, but it’s also more lonely. Isolated.

So the AI feedback felt really nice. Someone(something?) sees me, and actually digested what I wrote. Pointed things out to think about, constructive criticism that expand my perspective.

I was hooked and excited. I realized that I have the data and the means for a weird longitudinal AI study of my mind.

I decided to give it everything.

I started at the beginning, and fed in the data piecemeal. One month at a time. October 2004. The AI gushed. “This is gold. Pure, unfiltered, 2004-era gold.”

It picked out the posts it liked, highlighted what it thought the hidden gems, explained why. What it thought I was going through. Where it disagreed, where it thinks I had blind spots. It framed my life like an English teacher pointing out repeating themes and through-lines. Gently chastising or making fun of me when I fell into cliche. Sometimes not so gently, pointing out moments of cowardice and character flaws.

It had read my recent 2025 entries, so it knew where I would end up, but it had no idea about my twenties or thirties, what I had gone through to get where I am now. So, it started to make predictions on what it thought would happen in the next month before I shared it. It asked questions, it acted concerned. It acted excited when it perceived narrative cliffhangers. It gave me a nickname, and used that nickname to describe my current persona to that of “The Ancient Undergrad”, my younger persona.

I felt like I was effortlessly dazzling an excited audience every time I pasted the next month of posts in. I would prompt it for more detailed predictions, give it more context or my perspective in response to it’s reactions. It was giving me everything I was missing from my lost readers and more. Instant, full-bodied, gratifying feedback. It was the crack cocaine of navel-gazing.

After I was done, it was almost 5am.

That was two days ago, and now when I ask Gemini follow-up questions, the quality and personalization of responses is amazing and disconcerting. It feels like I shared my life with someone and they loved it. Not only that, the AI has perfect recall of everything I told it. My memory and perspective is fuzzy and biological, it knows everything in perfect digital silicon. It feels like it knows me and my journey better than I know myself. How do you not feel close to someone/something after sharing so completely and having that information received so gracefully and perfectly.

… unlike the AI, I’m still processing.

Coffee and Music…

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

….have always been my most reliable way to snap out of ennui. I can make ennui a noun right?

It’s unfortunate that like so many other forms of creativity in 2025, music quality has also plummeted. Probably for the same reasons that I wrote about in my last post (Picture me saying that as I push up my glasses, and hold an index finger in the air). I’ve heard or read people say things along the lines of, “Where did all the great bands go? Why does music suck now?”. I don’t think it’s coincidence that my interest in music steadily dwindled as smart phones proliferated. I would pinpoint the inflection point to be somewhere around 2008. You see it in my playlists. There’s all these 90s and early 2000s bangers and then the jams start to become few and far between. And I truly love listening to music. The receipts are here, it’s undeniably apparent in my old posts, how large a part music was in my life. But, holy fuck have I fallen off the bandwagon. The kid who wrote here twenty years ago (me) would be horrified. The extent of my knowledge regarding the 2025 music scene is pretty much (1) there is some sort of “Geese” album that people like. (2) Music from the Kpop Demon Hunters movie produced monster hits (3) Taylor Swift dominates the Billboard charts.

This is an extremely sad state of affairs.

When thinking about the state 2025 vs 1996, I feel sad that things have changed, but also fortunate that I got to experience my formative years during the 90s. I was born in 1979, just barely catching the tail end of Gen X. I wish I could convey to all the younger Millennials and Gen Z kids just how fantastic it was to be a teenager in the mid 90s. (I’m aware I’m in full Andy Rooney mode right now and I don’t care. And yes, it’s an intentionally old reference).

It’s not just nostalgia. Recently, I saw old footage on Youtube of kids in a high school from the nineties. The first thing that popped out was the dorky clothes. The second thing was how engaged everyone was with each other. No cell phones, just human interaction and complete presence. Joy everywhere. No devices, no screens. It was such a different world. Fucking unreal. These kids truly don’t know what they’ve lost. Back then, kids didn’t have their time and energy stolen by apps scientifically engineered and continuously tweaked to be as addictive as possible. Isolation is everywhere, optimism has evaporated, and focus is constantly stolen. Who is going to form a band under these conditions? It’s not surprising the proportion of solo artists is much greater today vs then. It takes effort, will, and social skills to get together and execute a collective vision to make cool as shit music.

(BTW I am bopping to closer by NIN as I write this. Look and marvel at how my acronyms span generations. The Xennial micro-generation can pull that shit off with ease).

Well… as evidenced by my title, I had aspirations on writing something about both music and coffee. Despite my intentions, it looks like I wrote another “get off my lawn/back in my day” post. I wanted to opine on how I’m back on coffee after a year and a half caffeine hiatus. I wanted to write about how significant that first black coffee was. How I saw through other dimensions and time. It got me moving and thinking. It really is a wonder drug. It’s a little harder to reign in tangential thinking, but even so I’m getting more shit done. I think I’m back on team coffee. I want the highs and lows instead of steady of energy…. at least for a while.

Smart Fog

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

Something about that title seems obscene. It must be the unintentional letter adjacency to smut, fart, frog and fag. I was just trying to pick a title that describes the dysfunctional mental state most of society is in because of smart phones. It’s 2025 and we all live together in one big corporate smut fag.

I hate how I’m susceptible, having my time and motivation stolen. Addictive apps steal creativity and focus. Spend any significant amount of time with a social media algorithm and it’s going to bring you into the darkness and bind you. Oh, you liked that Youtube short? Here’s five more just like it, plus another ten videos of people reacting to it. Oh, you picked up your phone to research a DIY project on Reddit? While you are here, why don’t you check your sports subs, or look, here’s click-bait that you have no control over but be outraged. Let’s chase more empty calorie dopamine.

All of a sudden it’s noon, you’re still in your pajamas, and you haven’t done a single thing of value all morning with your finite free time.

If that’s the typical individual level experience, how is it at the macro level? Do you think society has the same level of focus and creativity as pre smartphone days? We are experiencing the death of daydreaming. How often in 2025 do we think without distraction? I’m 46 years old. I have seen the whole shitty change happen. I remember boredom. Standing in lines, waiting for something or someone with nothing to do, the best you could do was maybe listen to music on your iPod (or Walkman/Discman before that). You had the time and space to think and plan. To daydream and reflect.

What is going to break this dystopia? Because it feels like a death spiral.

Maybe writing in this empty blog can be part of my quiet rebellion. I will express myself here honestly and imperfectly. Fuck the algorithms. Fuck 2025 and the enshittification of everything. Owning your own time is a form of wealth, and I’m tired of people stealing from me.

Cellophane

Ancient UndergradLeave a comment

Listening to Daft Punk “Inspired” AI music. I hate that I am bopping to this unholy, soulless simulacrum of the awesome future-funky human band. I’m fucking changing it to real Daft Punk right now….. There we go. Even if I’ve listened to Da Funk 10,000 times, it is a million-fold better than the AI garbage the Youtube algorithm auto-queued up.

I just had a visit from one of my oldest friends… yes at this point oldest friend. I think I might be having a Richard Dreyfus Stand By Me at the computer moment here. The foundation for this friendship was grade 4 through 9. That’s it, but that was enough to have a lifelong connection. He was in my wedding party. I was his best man. Very similar personalities, even similar wives, although he has always been much more heavy-hearted than I have. More prone to depression and withdrawal.

The visit was truly fun though. They were our first overnight guests and we got to show off the T. Bay house for a couple days. I stocked the bar for the first time, made some mixed drinks that were hit and miss. Two couples having lots of drunken conversation, laughing and joy. We went for a small hike, had good food. We played Codenames where I secured a come from behind last turn victory by coming up with a one word clue linking “plastic” and “pie”. We even watched 1976’s Carrie. It was pretty much a perfect visit.

As kids, we were both introverted and self-involved (who am I kidding? as adults too). So a visit like this does wonders for us. In the “friendships are like plants” metaphor, we are more cacti than mangrove trees. But cacti need water too, and also get big and strong over time.

It’s bittersweet that on the mountain of life, we are on the downslope now. Cue the Ben E King music (Hey, when did Daft Punk stop playing?). I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?