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Dark Days and Lowering Clouds
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 159
The past week, two even, low and lowering clouds, rain and more rain, and now, with daylight savings time, 8 hours (roughly) of daylight obscured by fog & rain, the tones of grey diminishing and then advancing throughout the day, 8 AM until 4 PM.
And then it's dark.
All this made worse by the fact that I have a flu, or the Covid, I'm not sure which, or if it matters, a low level headache, cold, from time to time coughing up white frogs and spawn that stick in the sink...
Going to swill them down with boiling water and they cook up like eggs, whites fluttering from around and under the drain.
Try and sleep, to no avail, try and get up, to as well no avail, read books, drink, coffee, tea, soda, whatever...
Cook, food, don't forget to eat, the same pasta with sausage day after day, breakfast a hard-boiled egg, some cheese & cranberry, yogurt and blueberries, some seeds, sunflower, pumpkin, flax, days pass and the flu/Covid hangs in there, not so sick that I want to be inside all day, not so nice out that I want to be outside all day, and nowhere's social can you be in the land of the un-vaxxed unless you'd inspire suspicion and paranoia...
Anyways, it must be reaching the end of it's run, almost 2 weeks in, a slow slide in, and gradual climb out, rubbing tiger balm on my chest, lying on my industrial back massager, gonna shake the phlegm out of my lungs...
I'm in need of some joy, and if I can recover enough there's an event next weekend...
Willard and his Bowling Trophies - Richard Brautigan
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 161
A mercifully short (perhaps an hour all in) book, about a group of murderous brothers bent on recovering their stolen bowling trophies.
Humorous, lyrical, after "The Fiery Angel" all I could perhaps stand.
On that note, my review for that is pending, but 5 stars surely...
Always on...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 183
Now I'd heard this, that you should safely presume your phone is always listening to you.
And I'd had some evidence, as for example a few weeks ago I was humming/singing "Pretty Women..." from Sweeny Todd, and then - to my surprise, it turned up on my YouTube recommendations.
To be sure, I checked my history, no evidence that I'd listened to it for a very long time. And you could say "Coincidence" but I am skeptical, more that just as the internet absorbs local cues and surfing habits to tailor your content, but spies upon you by listening as well...
I wonder what keywords I'd need to be speaking out loud to bring the FBI to my door?
Which is kind of funny, because I went to use the microphone on my phone a week or so ago and to do so I had to enable all sorts of permissions that by default are turned off.
I think we're long past the point where this is paranoia, this is simply reality. 1984.
And, on a more humorous note, all that time looking at inane Facebook videos has resulted in me getting ads promising to treat my adult ADHD...
Inane Facebook Videos, without end
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 167
Still on Facebook, far too often, checking Marketplace for a very few pieces of furniture that will complete my apartment.
And I end up on their videos. Treasure videos, because sometimes I look at the ones where they're looking for gold in the outback or digging up giant quartz crystals in the Mt. Blanc, Alabama and Mohawk Valley.
There's a lot of good stuff to be found.
The problem, I'm guessing, is there's just not enough of this going on, and so a whole pile of Tik-Tokkers have gotten in on the trend, making increasingly outlandish videos, some of which I watch, because, well, I just have to...
This girl is great, Asian, I'm guessing somewhere in China, she wades into the stream, looking for clams, when she finds one opening it to find no end to preposterous treasures. The happy face tattooed on her middle finger suggests some cultural alliances...
Of course the green heart shaped diamonds weren't enough, other clams gave were filled with pink heart shaped diamonds, brilliant blue diamonds, green pearls, blue marbles or bath beads, I mean, if you ever wondered where Dollorama got it's craft supplies I think I've figured it out...
These can become addictive, with the mental consequences somewhat akin to the physical consequences of a diet of only McDonalds.
I mean, there are metal detectorists that have no idea how to use a metal detector, people hauling up - what if were real - 1000lb gold bricks and vases with one hand, there are the "Cross-Cultural" vocalizations like "Wow" and "Oh My God" and "200 Kilograms" (as he's lifting it out with the claw of a hammer), the heavy breathing, the breaking open of a 200 lb gold nugget only to find that it's in fact a giant sapphire, giant clams filled with colored pearls that have already had the holes drilled...
And given the dispersal of the videos, there are content farms from Russia to Asia and Africa, and, given the numbers of views (some in the millions) these are clearly where the real treasures are.
I find this curious, my own tastes, there are perfectly real videos of people digging up Smokey Quartz points on Mount Blanc, gwindels, as well as on Pikes Peak and in Alabama, but they have the merest fraction of views, the real treasure lies in the generating of mindless content, monetizing it, dragging out the length of the video for "maximum engagement", not a "get to the point mentality", or "this is how / where we do it and what we find", it's appealing to an innate deep seated desire to find treasure and become rich beyond our wildest dreams.
Anyways, I had to share, my tastes are seriously being dumbed down by the internet and I'm greatly not getting out and digging up more treasures this summer. Although, looking around the apartment at all the rocks and I'm realizing I've dug up quit enough...for the moment at least.
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