my journal: various subjects, opinionating, CW at times
The title explains itself.
If you're interested in the ramblings of a middle-aged man with chronic conditions who, at times, sees things a little too clearly for his own good, then read on.
Sometimes I get political, but it won't be all the time.
I don't mind comments in general but if you're going to differ with what I write, that's fine--as long as you can explain your position clearly & reasonably. Rants, shouting & general incoherence will be ignored or flagged, depending on the situation. Try to remember that not everyone else in this world holds your beliefs.
Every so often I may post art or snapshots of projects I'm working on.
If you're still interested after reading all the above, great. (I do wonder at how much time you have on your hands, though)
It seems a member of our little online community has abruptly left CupsLand. This is the 2nd time I've seen it happen since I found this place almost three years ago...
Goodbye girl....I hope you make it out of your home, carve your own path, & figure out how to help your country alleviate its problems, as you told me you wanted.
And good luck. You will need it. 😔
I feel like resting, but I also feel like buying a soda. Go figure.
Yesterday I wondered if it was a mistake for prehistoric humans to have gradually evolved symbolic language... By that I mean spoken words wuth syllables & all. It certainly predated the cuneiform writing of Sumerian city-states by many millennia. You need concepts, & words that denote those concepts, in order to have anything to write about.
In short, the emergence of human language was an essential step prior to the "Neolithic revolution"...that is, the coming of civilization. But as should be clear by now, civilization is a mixed blessing at best. Humans lived as hunter-foragers for some 99% of the species' lifetime so far...settling down by rivers & gradually learning how to plant & reap only happened in the last several thousand years (btwn 10 & 12K years). If farming, village life & urban living were really such great innovations then why didn't they occur much earlier?
Wolves, African wild dogs, hyenas, etc. all live without symbolic language as far as we know. They do fine overall; if that weren't the case then they would've died out a long time ago. And they do not have a class gap of rich & poor, militaries, organized warfare, diseases caused by close proximity to livestock or sedentary lifestyles, etc. Also, they generally don't lie to each other.
Rubbed saddle soap all over my work boots a few minutes ago...now they're outside the door. (Am in a motel room atm) Once they're dry, it will be time to apply the mink oil.
Maybe I'm just being a geek, but I believe that if you have gear you depend on to do a job then you should take care of it. Why let it wear out prematurely?
@slowdecline48 Let me just start by saying I really appreciate how you come up with such profound questions and thoughts. I actually read your journal entries as a kind of thinking exercise—to make my brain work. So apologies in advance if I end up replying to your journal in looong paragraphs liiike this one.
About your thoughts: you're absolutely right to point out that symbolic language emerging long before writing or agriculture. It was foundational to the rise of civilization which has been both a blessing and a blunder. Language enabled the abstraction needed for planning, myth making and record keeping.... all those stuff that made farming and urban life possible. But civilization came with monumental costs.... inequality, organized warfare, pandemics, environmental collapse. It’s telling that humans lived as relatively egalitarian foragers for most of our history as hunter gatherers then only settling into villages and cities when climate conditions finally made agriculture viable. That suggests farming wasn’t an obvious innovation but a gradual response to environmental and demographic pressures.
I think it was Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens ( Or Jared Diamond in The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race ) who argued that the agricultural revolution may have actually lowered quality of life for many—narrower diets, longer work hours, increased disease and the birth of hierarchy and conflict. Meanwhile animals like wolves, hyenas and wild dogs thrive without symbolic language or civilization. They live without class divisions or mass scale suffering.
But they also don’t have science (a boon and a bane), music (mostly boon) or moral philosophy or memes or gifs or ice creams.
So maybe the real issue isn’t that symbolic language or civilization was a mistake—it’s that our cultural complexity evolved much faster than our ethical maturity. Language didn’t doom us.... it gave us the tools to imagine, remember, manipulate and build. The fact that we’ve built unjust systems says more about how we’ve used those tools than about whether we should have had them in the first place. Wolves may not have cities or poetry but they also don’t have antibiotics, Vivaldi, telescopes—or existential dread. We traded stability or longevity for novelty, meaning and progress—and all the mess that comes with it.
@azurePond Didn't know my journal was so useful to anyone here...that's nice, I guess.
I don't buy into anprim*...hunter-forager life was no paradise, for sure. God help you if you fracture a few ribs while trying to down an angry mammoth with your buddies. The idea that primitive clans were bastions of equality is naïve, of course...they almost certainly had clearly defined gender roles. And when one clan or tribe first encountered another the body count shot up. But that was as bad as it got: clan or tribal battles with spears or arrows, maybe with chipped flint knives for the coup de grace. Paleolithic people never built nuclear warheads, let alone all the other weaponry invented through the ages. (I say this as someone who owns a few dangerous toys myself)
If unjust systems were what we built, then how could civilization not be a mistake?
From where I stand, it all seemed inevitable once people settled down & started planting.
*short for anarcho-primitivism. It's the only strain of anarchism where it is recognized that modern mass society can't exist without hierarchy &, to some extent, social classes. But it's just as impossible & naïve as all other anarchist ideologies. Last time I checked, the main anprim theorist was an aging windbag named John Zerzan. Anprim is basically an ideology based on the Edenic "noble savage" myth.
@slowdecline48 Chronic faith is a good thing it is light on the mindset.
@affectionateShade7072 Not in my experience... Maybe it is for those who are capable of faith. I am not one of those people.
May I ask why you posted faith-related comments in three journals within a minute? One of them was kind of odd, since that particular journal (Out of the Corner/In the World) is by someone who shut down her account a few days ago.
Just after 10 a.m. & already the day sucks...
...I'm sweating even though I haven't lifted a tool or anything heavy.
Sometimes I hate my life.
@slowdecline48 Hot and humid there today? I'd send some cooler temps for you if I could. It's only in the 50's here right now
@mytwistedsoul It sure is. On top of that, I lost the cap to my insulated water bottle this morning & the two-day stay in a motel in town was nowhere near as restful as it should've been...sinuses are f***ed up. I suspect it was the paint on the walls, as the owners recently renovated the place.
So tired right now
"In 54 developing countries, debt payments to China will exceed the combined payments owed to the Paris Club of Western bilateral lenders....
As Beijing shifts into the role of debt collector, Western governments remain internally focused, with aid declining and multilateral support waning."
...this may well turn out to be the Chinese century.
@slowdecline48 The debt trap diplomacy, the string of pearls and the BRO.... China is definitely trying!
For sure. The Belt & Road Initiative is global empire-building in everything but name.
New entry in an old thread...click here if you're interested in reading it.
Christ in a Volkswagen, I hope I'm not getting sick again...
@slowdecline48 Oh man. Could it be something you picked up at the hotel?
@mytwistedsoul It has to be...how I got it I don't know, since I was never in close proximity to anyone for long enough to catch anything. The owners have been renovating all the rooms...maybe it was necessary. But sometimes house paint gives off chemical vapors for a time even after it's dried. I suspect that was the cause... Or it could've been mold in the A/C unit. Who knows? All I know is my sinuses & throat were irritated both nights I stayed in the room, so I didn't get much sleep--which was the point of staying there to begin with (along with a shower & cleaning up). Since then my head has been f***ed up. 🤦🏼♂️
...Don't wanna go to a doctor for it because I have a couple medical bills to take care of already.
Someone once said "if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans"...is that because not even a supernatural deity can stop the Murphy factor?....
@slowdecline48 It could be the VOCs in the paint — you might be sensitive to them... especially if you're experiencing sinus issues. I get similar symptoms too... I'm sensitive to certain VOCs in some paints, perfumes, coconut oil and certain essential oils (Yk, the heavily scented ones they use in spas) Just being around them or inhaling their scent can trigger my sinuses. I use nasal drops for temporary relief ( and then remove myself from that environment) but if there's wheezing or tightness involved then you could consider bronchodilators or anti inflammatory meds (take a doctor's advise though)
@slowdecline48 It does seem that way doesn't it? I've heard man plans, God laughs. Same sentiment though lol
I'm frustrated for you. Not that it helps but I know you were wanting to get things done and get your house built. It's frustrating that so many things are working against you
I know you said you don't want to go to the doctor again because of the medical bills you already have, just don't let it get too bad before you go. I'm not sure what your thoughts are on this but around here you can get antibiotics at feed mills. It's for fish but I keep it on hand for the cat and have used it myself a few times. Just a thought ... 😅
@slowdecline48 I get what you are saying—sometimes it really does feel like everything is just against us. All I can say is hang in there. But seriously.... please take care of your health. Don’t wait till it gets worse. Are the medical bills that high even for something like an allergy check up? That’s just wild. Like @mytwistedsoul said, I’m frustrated for you. But honestly, I’m more angry for you. Like in what kind of world does someone have to resort to antibiotics from a feed mill? It’s literally a basic human right—to live, and I mean really live, not just survive. That includes the right to a healthy life. And if the government can’t provide healthcare (we’re not even talking about full blown socialism or anything) the least they could do is make sure it’s actually affordable. It shouldn’t be this hard. 
@azurePond I 'preciate the thoughts....I believed in human rights theory until quite recently (that's a separate discussion). It is true that medical care in the US mostly stinks, & yes...so many of us should receive better care than we're getting. The Nordic countries do a much better job overall with public health care, I've been told. How many Americans are going day to day without surgeries that not only would help us feel better but also would improve our work performance?
How is is that after the sun goes down the air can be cold outside, it can feel cold inside, yet as I'm lying down in the back seats I still sweat like an athlete running a half-marathon?...
@slowdecline48 You're not running a low grade fever are you?
@mytwistedsoul Not as far as I can tell. Normally I don't go to antibiotics as a first resort, since if a disease is viral then no antibiotic will do anything to it. In my case, though, bacterial sinus infection happens at least once a year & sometimes twice. My sinuses suck gibbon balls & my immune system ain't much better.
It's also possible that I might've caught something that was going around when I checked in & the motel room aggravated it. Today is the 2nd day I've noticed other people sneezing.
Funny you should mention feed mills & such...a couple weeks ago I was at a hardware/farm supply store in town & noticed all the stuff they stock for horses. (Also products for dogs & cats) I considerably reduced the biting flies & skeeters inside my truck in the evenings just by spraying repellent on the top edges of the window openings, & on the edges of the windows themselves. The repellent is also bug killer--meant for use in horse stalls! I might be the the first guy to ever use it on a moving vehicle 😆
@slowdecline48 I don't either. I've had bronchitis enough that I can tell if it's starting and it can take forever sometimes to get an appointment at the doctor's. What about a neti pot? They're supposed to help manage sinus infections, just make sure to use distilled water. I'd probably drown myself with one 😂
Had a bad flareup while here in town...the rain probably has something to do with it. The head pain is brutal enough that I will not drive right now...am just kicking back in the driver's seat. If any state or local cops want to make an issue of it, let 'em. I refuse to drive while impaired. Will try to drive later.
The song that sums up how I am right now.
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Also, the 90's & early 00's were the last era when we produced consistently good music.
@slowdecline48 I hope you got to where you wanted to be safely. Hope the pain eases too. It really is always something isn't it?
@mytwistedsoul It never eases completely, you know that...
I was going to get stuff done today, but at this point all that's left is to drive back home & try to rest. Today bites.
So after driving back to my parcel this morning I put up the sunshades, rolled the side windows 3/4ths-down, then laid down in the back seat & basically sweated through the day... I did manage to get some sleep here & there. One advantage of a hot environment is even the insects won't bother you when the temperature is higher than they can stand.
A few minutes ago I logged into the fedgov's health care website & finished what I started earlier this week. In 7 to 10 days, the ID card & other documents for my new health insurance should arrive in the mail. Had to change plans because given the expenses of vehicle maintenance & current medical bills, I couldn't stick with the plan I had.
...I kinda feel like driving back into town now. Go figure. 😒
@slowdecline48 I wonder if a tent wouldn't be more comfortable? It would have better circulation and space to stretch out. Or a screened tent? *** even something made with a tarp. At least during the day anyway. I'd be dying. I bet that heat's not helping your health either Slow 😞
@mytwistedsoul That's the strange part...I'd think it wouldn't help anything either. But I managed to sleep, & now I don't have as much of a cough. The congestion isn't quite as bad. Higher temps might kill certain germs. I would rather do this in a bathtub, but as long as I have enough water to drink it should work.
One thing I've noticed: leaving the windows down makes a difference. So does leaving one of the doors slightly open... As long as the air can circulate, a total greenhouse effect is avoided.
Having said all that, I do need to put up the shelter. Bought a tarp last week...all that's left is trimming the small trees I felled into poles & puttin' em up in a clear spot. Now if my brain would just stop whirling for a while...
@slowdecline48 If it's working and helping it can be as strange as it needs to be. Definitely make sure you drink lots of water and if your sweating a lot maybe throw in a Gatorade now and again. Or maybe get those things to add to water. Dollar general sells them pretty cheap
Thanks for the advice...as always, it is wise.
I got it together enough to drive into town today. Gonna get something to eat in a few minutes. Also have to clean & refill the two carboys in the back. Gotta have potable water stored up!
