Awakening
My dream bubble exploded with an audible “pop!”, spattering me with make-believe fluid and waking me from the hallucination it held within.
Hey can someone help me? I’m trying to find the original post or whatever source of an image that looks like the one I drew here.
I’m pretty sure it was a child’s drawing, and I believe there was something about it being an “image of god”.
“Runs in the Family” by Amanda Palmer, 2003 or 2007
Kagey Song Thoughts 20:
Regulars will recognize Amanda Palmer, of course. She’s great. Yes. This song sort of completes the theming of the last few songs. A family.
Though, of course, the song doesn’t really present family as a positive thing, as far as I can tell. It sounds like a song in which she is pointing out problems in her family and her own life, blaming it on either genetics or a more nebulous idea of “family”.
Reading the lyrics, I feel like I basically got the right idea without fully understanding them. She mentions health problems with her friends as well as herself, pointing out how they are inherited. There are also lyrics that seem to allude to a concern for passing on her problems (that is, family), and hence is averse to getting pregnant.
The singing has a sort of raving aspect to it, a lot like one of Amanda Palmer’s songs in the Dresden Dolls (which is probably not a coincidence, since she apparently wrote this song for the Dresden Dolls at first). It’s very passionate, even angry, and I feel like I can understand why. A big reason–maybe the biggest one–that life is so frustrating is that we don’t get to choose our starting conditions. We can’t decide what family we live with, where our homes are located, how wealthy we are, our race, our sex, or of course our genetic predispositions. And despite what some people might say, those starting conditions really matter. It’s why the phrase “life isn’t fair” is basically a true statement.
“Not Your Regular Angel” by Jeff Claassen, 2005
Kagey Art Thoughts 48:
If you’re on my blog and click on the appropriate tag, you’ll see that I’ve written about Claassen before–he’s modern, makes weird art, etc.
This piece of art is weird in a few ways, the first of which is the title itself. “Not Your Regular Angel” implies that an “angel” that is not literally an angel is depicted or implied. My initial thought was that the “angel” was some unseen entity doing something to remove the energy or soul of the character, thus acting in a way you would not assume an angel might. However, upon looking at some of Claassen’s other works, I’m inclined to think the character herself is the angel. In that event, perhaps she is atypical for an angel because of how unhappy she and her environment look. But I have a different idea.
Have you ever watched Donnie Darko? Or, if not, have you seen/read the Midnight Crew segment of Homestuck? In both of them (the latter inspired by the former), certain characters can see a kind of ethereal “trail” that represents where someone is fated to go in the future. The blue wispiness coming out of the angel reminds me of those trails, but there’s something different in this case! The angel’s trail splits into two different trails, which, to me, implies that she might do one thing or might do another. Who knows?
Well, according to many sects of Abrahamic religions, their monotheistic god knows, because angels do not have free will (though this differs depending on which religion or sect we’re talking about). So, in my made-up lore for this piece of art, the angel has the option between two different actions because she has free will, which would indeed make her an irregular angel.
Anyway, I’m not entirely certain why I like this art, but I did come to a realization somewhat recently, which is that I tend to like sad things. Not in real life, mind you, but in fiction books and artwork. And of course there’s more nuance to it than that, but the point is just that this artwork clearly evokes a feeling of sadness. The angel is frowning and out-of-place seeming, the colors are all dull, and the background is a strange upward-dripping depression zone. Why do I like this? I don’t know, but I do!
Alexocution: A Study in Invisible
Last night I had a dream, don’t fully remember, etc.
I was in the Harry Potter universe, I guess as Harry Potter but this isn’t readily apparent. Further complicating things, my wife Jasmine was in it, but I think she was also Hermione.
Hagrid needed help for some reason, I think he was injured? Jasmine looked at her phone and did mysterious calculations, quickly determining where Hagrid’s assailant might be. We went out to some public area and I saw Barty Crouch Jr. standing next to a wall, his head tilted up with closed eyes as if enjoying nonexistent rain.
As in many dreams I remember, I had out-of-universe foreknowledge of things, and thus I knew that Barty Crouch Jr. was the villain and was about to get away by going through an illusory wall, but for some reason I couldn’t say this outright. So instead, I pointed him out and said that he looked suspicious and we should watch him. The three of us then slowly walked by, surreptitiously keeping an eye on him as he walked into the wall. Somehow, this act was proof enough of his guilt, and Hagrid went back and grabbed him, able to overpower him despite failing to do so before.
After I woke up and wrote some cursory notes about the dream, I thought to myself how interesting it would be for there to be a mystery show set in the Harry Potter universe, wherein a Sherlockian auror or something investigates magical crimes.
Jasmine and I have been friends for 14 years, in a romantic relationship for 12 years, living together for 7 years, and married for 3 years.
Early next year, we will move into a new home for the first time since we moved here 7 years ago. This place will be bigger, and we might finally get a pet or two.
It’s exciting, even amidst all the moving and cleaning worries and reading this 57-page document that we have to sign.
The Phantom Link
For the majority of my relationship with Jasmine, I’ve taken to just sending her links to things that I liked or otherwise wanted her to see for some reason. She affectionately called this “junk”, as in “oh, you’re junking me again”, and consequently our private Slack channel wherein I send her links is called #junk. Anyway, it was only relatively recently that I figured I could do the same to a slightly wider audience, so here you go.
“Witzelsucht” - “…
a set of pure and rare neurological symptoms characterized by a tendency to make puns, or tell inappropriate jokes or pointless stories in socially inappropriate situations.”
“Uchchaihshravas” - Hindu mythology is probably my favorite mythology, and only part of it is the fact that it includes things like seven-headed flying horses.
“Medjed” - Egyptian mythology is also good, though I feel like Medjed manages to fail to represent the goodness of the Egyptian gods while nevertheless being good in a very different way.
https://twitter.com/meetissai/status/1092340791232552961 by meetissai - Please look at this person’s works.
“Uncleftish Beholding” by Poul Anderson - An essay written in a hypothetical version of English called “Anglish”.
“Men Writing Women” via Reddit - The way an unfortunate number of men write female characters is sad, funny, and infuriating all at once–especially, I’m sure, if you’re a woman. This Reddit (is… is that how you refer to specific partitions of the website? (ah, Jasmine explained to me it is called a subreddit)) has several examples of this fact, as well as opposing examples of how to write women well. As a male writer, I fully intend to not be so ridiculous (and I think I’m doing all right so far).
“New York City Bus Simulator” played by Vinesauce - A classic.
“I Built an Unethical Zoo Where Nobody Is Safe”
by Let’s Game It Out - This video is by a guy who plays video games (generally of the sandbox variety), wherein he causes as much chaos as possible. Jasmine discovered this YouTuber kinda randomly, and we’ve been steadily going through his videos, laughing all the way. The video I linked is among my favorites (of the ones we’ve seen so far), but I definitely recommend giving the rest of his stuff a look if you like this sort of thing.
“Is Forces of Destiny Good?” by Jenny Nicholson - If you follow my Twitter, you may have seen me mention this video already. Jenny Nicholson makes insightful and hilarious videos on YouTube that Jasmine and I both watch, often but not exclusively about Star Wars. This particular video, I feel, is an excellent example of how she can talk about something I know basically nothing about and still make it interesting and funny.
