Apples

If apples were dollars my wallet wouldn't work, ATMs would need to be refridgerated, gangsters would need bushels to show off, and it would get confusing buying an apple at the store.

Stupid, stupid me.

I spent some analytical, deeply-introspective minutes the other night as I was settling in for a good night, arms behind my head, laying in the dark beside Spring as she stole the covers and tucked them by her legs and didn't give me any room but that's another post I suppose but boy my butt was cold when I woke up the next morning.

So here's how it went:

"Why am I so hard on myself? Why do I put myself down? Why do I call myself an idiot and a stupid, stupid twit often often often?"

I asked myself why if I wouldn't say that to someone else, why would I be so mean to myself (as though 'myself' was an entity somehow separate to the 'me' that thinks this crap up).

Then today as I was reflecting on this highly important self-esteem-related issue, it occurred to me. My drawing a direct relationship between calling myself an idiot and not calling someone an idiot in front of their faces was a poor comparison. Don't make the mistake of drawing that parallel.

To the degree that I call myself an idiot to myself privately, I call others idiots privately to myself. "What a fucking idiot" I say to myself about so and so. "I just don't get it, why are they so uncaring?" I ask myself. I wouldn't say that to their faces.

So I figure here's a theory: If I train myself to by less judgemental of others, maybe I'll be less judgemental of myself. And then I'll feel better about myself, and shine a bit more and then feel less likely to feel judgemental about others.

Except those who have soul-patches above their chins. Or those who wear hip-packs. Or those who talk loudly on cell phones.

Or the ultimate villians - those who smoke outside buildings in the vestibule to guarantee anyone walking through their offensive, irritating, selfish plumes of tobacco smoke will smell like their disgusting selfish habit for an hour.

Phew.

The Loathesome Spyware

I spent about 6 hours over the last 3 days ridding myself of some sticky, nasty, medusa-like spyware that infiltrated my system. I got it by downloading a keygen for some DVD burning software, and activating it without scanning it with my security software.

Pervasive evil spyware - filled up my registry and temp directory and URL cache with nasty trojan hijacker files. I'm quite clever at fixing my computer. How the hell do most people deal with this sort of infection? Damn the spyware authors. May they have difficulty achieving Nirvana in this life.

Dumb-ass me.

My Breast Bone

For the last 4 weeks my breast bone has been aching and cracking when I stretch, or even when I sneeze. It is such a relief when I am finally able to crack it, but I wonder why this has happened now. It needs a good cracking now. If I removed it and dropped it in a pot with salt and pepper and boiled it for a while, the cartilage would transform to gelatin and I could make a nice soup stock with it. I guess that goes for the meniscus cartilage in my knee that I damaged as a teenager.

Paranoid

Years and years ago I listened to Black Sabbath's Paranoid album over and over as loud as I could while Matt's parents were in South Africa and he was away at university I guess or maybe in Sudbury.

It gave me peace of mind and helped me rock my worries away.
I also listened to AC/DC a lot.

The a-tadian

My first car was a 1984 Pontiac Acadian. It ran like the wind. Once a cop pursued us in South Dakota - I was pushing it to enormous speeds and didn't slow down. He had his hand on his gun when I finally pulled over. He wanted to put me in jail.

I will trade you my chicken pot pie for a log cabin.


I am having a chicken pot pie for dinner. I will trade you my chicken pot pie for a nice log cabin with 20 acres of land somewhere in Muskoka, lake-front please.
http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/ seems to have done something similar with a paperclip.
Amazing.
Makes my brain grow.


Cbeck out the rest here.

Campfire


Yesterday I drove Monty to Cherry Beach while Spring went to work to review topics in a topic review. In keeping with my recent obsession with camping, bushcraft, and all things survivalist, Monty and I walked down the beach until we arrived at an isolated cut-out, surrounded by bushes, facing onto the bay. Monty wandered about and located some sticks which he then brought over to me and deposited at my feet. He seemed quite content and very interested in this course of activity. I thought it seemed pretty interesting too. So I shuffled about like a rice-farmer, stooping about, gathering up small sticks of driftwood and sun-dried twigs. I pulled up a log that had drifted up on shore, and made a seat of it. Then I cleared a small circle of leaves and debris, and revealed the sand surface below. Then I gathered a few weeds that had fluffy dried seedpods - and lay down a small tinder bundle on a pile of twigs. Igniting this with a spark from my knife and spark-stick, I then piled small pieces of kindling over the flame and soon had a small campfire on the beach - no bigger than a dinner plate, but amazingly hot - I sat on the log, Monty settled in beside me and we looked out onto the bay, staying warm by the heat of the fire. When I picked Spring up from work, my clothes smelled of wood-smoke.

Here is my up-to-date Camping List for my next trip. Matt's gonna go too. We is gonna catch us some fish... Everything below will easily fit into my new interior frame back-pack - it's a pretty light load, compared with what I've brought before by myself. I'll update it after my trip, reality sometimes doesn't match a list.

Food & Drink

Instant Mashed Potatoes
Chocolate bars
Salt, pepper, spice
Tea and sugar
Oatmeal pouches
Tortillas
Chili can
2 Tins of evaporated milk
Fettuccine side-dish noodles
Rice
Beans
Bacon
6 eggs
Onion
Gin or Vodka in Plastic bottle
Lemon Drink Crystals
Oil in a plastic container
Hot chocolate with coffee mixed
Hotdogs

Kitchen

Mug
Stack of paper serviettes
Aluminium foil sheet
4 paper plates
Can opener
Nalgene bottle
Dish detergent
Cooking pot
Zip lock bags
Spoon
MIOX water purifier (maybe)

Clothes & Comfort

Self-inflating mattress
Sleeping Bag
Blanket & Bed for Monty
Pillow case
Jacket, Jeans, Cap
Socks 1 pair for each day
Boxers 1 for each day
Short and Long-sleeved Shirt
Cigar
Pillow
Swim-suit

Toiletries & First-Aid

Pepto-Bismol
Towel
Aspirin
Band-Aids
Iodine
Tweezers
Tensor bandage
Toilet paper
Shampoo
Soap
Comb
Toothpaste
Tooth-brush
Insect repellent
Sewing Kit
Nail clipper
Antacids, Zantac

Equipment & Gear

Camping shovel
Hatchet & sharpener
Flashlight & batteries (1 extra set only)
Compass
Shortwave Radio & Batteries
Book
Paper
Pencil
Watch
Sheath Knife
Fire starter
Camera
Fishing gear
Tarpaulin
Duct-tape
Tent
Chair - folding
Nylon Rope
Stove
Garbage Bags
Lantern & Mantle
White Fuel

The Nietzschean multi-universe and beers


So when I made it over
to Matt's last
night we settled Monty
in and then
went out and got some
beer and food and then when we got
back we listened to

Pink Floyd who if
you haven't heard
them well you should but seriously
then we talked
about philosophy and religion and politics and management theory and quantum
physics although
I really know very
little about

quantum physics but we liked to connect
our limited understanding
of Zen Buddhism
and quantum physics
the whole thing about multi-universes,
and karma, and I
brought Nietzsche into
the conversation
because my hero an existential
psychoanalyst

who likes his friends to
call him Irv but
I'm not a friend but hey that'd
be amazing well
anyway, Nietzsche liked
to talk about this
mental experiment of imagining that
your life repeats
infinitely, such that
any choice or
action or decision you make will be
made by you an
infinite number of times
over an infinite
number of photostatted lives

which I suppose
really makes you think
about stuff, like,
hey you always wanted to be a mime
and go to mime
school to fulfill a
childhood dream of
mimology etc... but you instead stay
in a job using a
metal punch to create
metal grilles for
riding lawn-mowers (to use an example
which I just came up
with), and really
what you are doing is
deciding that for an infinite
number of lives which
I guess puts a kind
of heavy perspective
on your own life so do it
right now don't mess
around because punching holes in metal
plates for eternity

sucks but being a mime might not
well I think it might but
for the purposes of this example
just go with

it honestly and I
like that whole thing about doing
the things that
are important
so I’m going camping soon.

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