Strange Dream Fragments


I had a dream involving a creature that looked like this but I haven't run across this creature ever in my life, not even on social media or internet reading. It's called the Antarctic Scale Worm, and it's apparently a deep water predator. 

In my dream, people were wearing this as a living stole, something like a living fashion accessory-pet. I don't remember much else about the dream except it involved a grey-green futuristic research facility that was in the woods somewhere. It was very dark. 

I should try to write down dream impressions when I wake up and see if they lead me anywhere, because this was totally too strange to find this in my feed today.

Scenes from the Gym Today


SCENE 1

Old Man sitting on a weight machine using an old iPhone. He is listening to the handset staring into space.

OLD MAN: Ok well I have to go but if you keep this up you're going to end up in jail just like your mother. Bye!


SCENE 2 - young man and woman walking down the stairs after finishing their workouts

YOUNG MAN: I just don't think that's how you are supposed to run a business.

YOUNG WOMAN: And he has this Polish Flag hanging up in there, like, how is that going to help?

YOUNG MAN: *shaking head*


SCENE 3 - an old man MIKE is vigorously using a rowing machine way too fast. A second old man FRANK enters and walks by him.

MIKE: (shouting): Hey Frank!

FRANK: (stops) Mike, how ya doing?

MIKE: I have some bad news for you Frank

FRANK: (beat)

MIKE: I'm not moving to Massachusetts!

Both begin to laugh the old man muppet laugh and become louder and more animated so much so that a woman who was slowly rowing next to them stops and joins in on the laughter, looking around the gym as she does so.


THE END




It arrives

In preparation for attending the Met Opera’s premiere of Moby-Dick, I bought the most praised edition of the book out there for us to read. It’s already blowing my mind with the annotations. 

I wonder if I will ever be able to teach this book in some way one day? Most likely never. But it remains a very exciting and interesting book to me. The challenge, as ever, is rhetorical. Should this book be interesting to others, and if so why? And if so, how? 


Mysterious Giovanni

Who is Giovanni? 

I was given a CD collection today and there are some amazing things in it but none more amazing than this collection of Giovanni CDs. 

Look at him. Can you have a more disinterested look? He looks like his parents are forcing him to take a photo. 

This collection must be the largest Giovanni album collection in the US right now. These are just a few of them. Why so many?

I also inherited a Bose radio CD player so what better way to test it than a Giovanni CD? There was already one in there when I opened it. It’s just piano music no vocals, which was disappointing. 

Then I started thinking about this from a Stephen King perspective. What if Giovanni is an ancient spirit and playing his whole album allows him to escape his CD prison (like the prison in Superman 2) and then he takes over my body and plays average piano with it? 

That wouldn’t be terrible now that I read it. Maybe even an improvement. But who is he?

Does anyone know or has anyone been to a Giovanni concert? 





Frog Bog

I'm watching GDQ and for some strange reason the sounds of this ancient Intellivision game I used to be addicted to entered my head. Here is Frog Bog, a childhood delight of a game that is also a fever dream and perhaps more. Now you too can enjoy the sounds that are suddenly with me after watching some speedruns.

I just got my Steam Deck; is there an intellivision emulator??


Minecraft

I'm still pretty obsessed with Minecraft. Visiting with my nephews over the winter holiday got me thinking about it a lot more. 

I am trying to play more games on the computer as it's just nicer than a console and more economical. I already have a nice computer, why not game on it more? 

I bought a Steam Deck that should arrive this week as part of the plan. I hope that it allows me to play more computer games in more locations around the house where I won't feel cooped up in the computer room which really is a home office for doing work for university and all that. 

Anyway, this video came across my YouTube this morning and it really got me excited to play some Minecraft later today!


The Real Music Stats for 2024

Today's the day where last.fm shows you your annual listening stats in much more detail than Spotify. They also consider December part of the year which Spotify doesn't for some odd reason.

Looks like I can't figure out how to make the replay public, but here's a link to my profile and pretty much everything I have listened to since 2007. You can look at annual track counts, and even down to daily on there if you like.

Some thoughts:

I felt my longest streak would have been 100+ days but I only had 85 concurrent as the longest. 

Last.fm tagged most of the Yellowcard tracks incorrectly, something I missed out on when looking over weekly and monthly reports. These are all meant to be the new joint album with Hammock. Spotify had these correct but somehow last.fm missed it. I wonder what happens if I correct the tags now? Technically it's still correct - it is Yellowcard - but it's not the actual track I listened do which was the remix with Hammock and a very different song. Plus, no credit for Hammock listening!

I really like all the other detailed descriptions of things in the report. I hope you consider getting last.fm and tracking your listening habits too! I've been at it since a student showed it to me in 2007. I have a lot of information about my listening including being able to tell when I heard a track and got obsessed with it to when I last listened to it. It's a lot of fun, as long as you aren't embarrassed by everyone seeing you listened to the same song like 20 times in a row. 

The image of the annual replay should be here in this post! I'll share more when I figure out how to do it. Might just be some screen shots.

Zen New Old Year!


I was sent this great New Year’s poem from the Kwan Um Weekly Zen email list. It’s so incredible, I thought I would share it here for the start to a great new old year!

Let’s see what we make 2025 into!

From Zen Master Seung Sahn 1980 New Year

Every year, every year, 
New year, new year.
Every year, every year,
Old year, old year.
 
Old year gone.... New year.
New year gone... Old year.
 
Who made that?
You? I? We? They?
No, no, no!
Then God? Buddha? Time? Space?
No, no, no!
Then the sun? The moon?, The earth? The stars?
No, no, no!
Then the mountain? The river? The tree? The flower?
No, no, no!
Then the elephant? The dog? The cat? The mouse?
No, no, no!
Then, "Three pounds of flax?"
"Dry shit on a stick?"
"Katz?"
"Mu?"
No, no, no!
 
Then what?

The snow sparkles in the dawn.

In the morning 1972 plus 8. 


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