It’s that time again.

Time for my usual hand wringing and agonizing as I figure out what I want.

What I really want is for my frigging keyboard to show up. Amazon says it has till 5:15 pm and right now it’s 4:28 pm so… tick tock, Amazon!

Their tracker says it’s two stops away. But it’s been saying that for 15 minutes.

Clearly, we have a hostage situation on our hands. Possibly armed.

Anyhow, back to typing painfully slowly about my birthday.

It’s sad that I have this strange inability to connect with my own desires. To me it suggests a deeply wounded and withdrawn soul, and well…yup.

That’s what it is alright.

Like I said in the vid, the things I want tend to be wildly impractical. And not just due to being unreasonably expensive.

Also sometimes due to not being within anyone’s power to give.

It’s not like someone can gift wrap a boyfriend and a job for me.

Ergo, I am trying really hard to think of reasonably priced things that would make my life easier and I am still drawing a blank.

The thermos is about it.

Maybe some kind of lightweight collapsible stool for the kitchen? That would let me sit down while things are cooking.

Sadly one I can use while cooking is not physically possible. The stool would have to be so tall it would take an elevator to get to the seat.

But a little stool that can easily be tucked away somewhere when I am not using it could work, I think.

More after the break.

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Animation done right

Julian introduced me to this and I am in awe of how perfect it is.

Obviously I seriously identify with our lil protagonist. I was fat, not scarred, and no pair of glasses can cover up that.

But I’ve been there, little fella. God have I been there.

You want to make friends so badly but you don’t really know how, like, at all, and once the initial burst of enthusiasm and courage fades all that energy turns into anxiety instead and the people you want to befriend seem alien and hostile and ugly and now you feel like you’re trapped behind enemy lines.

I wish I’d had a group of amazing people to help me through that. That’s why this little film is very therapeutic for me.

I was such a strange and lonely child. And I still carry around a lot of the pain and trauma from the long and deadly freeze that was my childhood.

No child should grow up so completely alone. No friends, no support, nobody to turn to when things got bad, no idea why I felt so bad that sometimes I felt like I wasn’t even real, or like I was crazy, or like the world was alien place now even though nothing had actually changed at all.

Looking back, I was a pretty mentally damaged kid.

No wonder I withdrew so deeply into myself. The real world was a harsh and lonely place where I had nobody – not family, not teachers, not any adults at all – that I could turn to for guidance, comfort, reassurance, or even just a sympathetic ear.

So I retreated deep into my shell, where at least I didn’t feel the cold so much.

Got to vent those negatives.

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The necessary update

Oh, and I got my new keyboard.

It has that weird new keyboard feel to it. Pressing the keys feels both too hard and too soft at the same time. And kinda squishy.

Oh well, the point is, it works. It was a rough and annoying 36 hours or so sans keyboard but I made it through.

I think the old one might be salvageable. I noticed that my “water” left behind some weird crystals that gunked up the keys and caused some of them to be stuck in the down position. If I clear those out, maybe it will work again.

If so, it will become my emergency backup keyboard in case the new one gets taken out of commission at some future date.

Might as well use the new one first!

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Another birthday idea

Oh, and I thought of another thing I want for my birthday : a cheap smartphone!

It can seriously be as cheap as they come because I don’t plan on using it for anything other than getting past two factor authentication on websites.

And maybe the occasional crossword puzzle.

But as long as it’s “pay as you go” and Android and can use our Wi-Fi for internet, I’ll be happy with it. I can just stick some money on it now and then for those rare moments when I actually want to use it as a phone and the rest of the time it’s just going to be used for logins and texting.

Oh right. It needs to do SMS texting. But it’s a smartphone, I assume they all do that.

A smartphone could also come in handy in the event that I end up in the hospital again, or even just waiting for a long time at the ER or UC.

It would not tempt me to use it nearly as much as getting my tablet fixed would. I do not want to go back to going from the big computer (my PC) to my small computer (my Amazon Fire tablet) and back again all day.

That was not good for my mental health, especially my sleep.

Plus, I have better things to do than zone out to video games all the time now.

There are job opportunities out there waiting for my extraordinary talents. There are new online environments to explore, new people to meet, new connections to make.

Video games are fun and all but no matter how much fun they are, at the end of it, all you did was play a game.

Why not get more out of life?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

And a very little blog entry, too.

Here is why :

So you see, I am “typing” this in by clicking on a virtual keyboard , and boy is it a lot of work compared to using the real thing.

So expect this entry to be considerably shorter than the usual one thousand words.

Possibly by quite a lot given how much effort has gone into getting this far and this is only the 81 word mark.

Oy is this going to be a schlep.

Oh well. I’ll get it now keyboard tomorrow and this sordid escapade will be over.

I’m going to miss my fuzzy friends, though . I mean, in theory , I could log on to Tapestries via the same virtual keyboard I am using to type these words, but in practice it is downright maddening to watch the conversation zoom past you as you struggle to keep up at your typing speed.

By the time you finish typing a reply, people have forgotten the question!

It’s like trying to converse via semaphore.

Who knows, though. If I get lonely enough I might go for it anyhow. Limit myself to talking privately with one person after explaining why I am suddenly so slow.

You, my dear friends, will sadly be on half rations. 250 words now and another 250 with supper later on.

Because even getting this far has taken a lot out of me. Christ is this irritating.

It’s like masturbating with mittens on.

Only without the friction burns.

“Kitten soft” my ass!

More after the break.

The downward slope

I seem to be on the downslope of my mood cycle today.

As in heading for the bottom and gaining speed. That is not a problem unless you make it into one by thinking you’re supposed to be “up” all the time.

Nuh-uh, nope. Not possible, never going to happen. Everything has a natural cycle and fighting it only makes things worse.

Just let it roll.

So yeah, I am headed for the bottom but that’s cool. The bottom is where I dump out the next load of negatives and dreck, and that lightens my load so much that I go soaring on up into the sky again.

Lather, rinse, repeat until clean.

It’s a system that works if you let it.

There’s a whole lot of wisdom in just getting the hell out of your own way.

It takes a special kind of ignorant arrogance to imagine that you know better than millions of years of instincts and that absolutely nothing can go right without you direct and conscious control and that you alone can fend off the darkness with your mind.

It takes a lot of brains to be that dumb.

Stupid people have no choice but to rely mostly on their instincts and emotions because they ain’t got shit else.

And while that doesn’t help them with their SATs, it keeps them from REALLY screwing themselves up, too.

And amen for that because they’re the ones running things.

I’ll talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

That’s a click-worthy video title, n’est-ce pas?

I’ve already spoken to my friends (love you!) about this subject but I go a little deeper into the subject in the vid.

It’s lovely to contemplate, isn’t it? All those know-nothings with their low information lifestyles and their homespun politics hate his guts more than anything else.

Because ya know what? Being out of the loop on the news means they are not subject to Fox News “flood the zone” propaganda or any other form of mass indoctrination.

All they know is what they can see going on around them. And all of that is bad. Trump’s in charge, everything sucks, ergo Trump sucks.

It’s really quite simple.

And the demonstrations get bigger and bigger. Pretty soon the time will be ripe for me to try to launch my “#OccupyAmerica” movement.

That’s when the people fill the streets and stay there. Where they peacefully protest in a way that causes disruption and chaos and the powerful appearance of an army laying siege to the Capitol.

Obviously DC would be one of the main focal points. But the point is to send the message that life will not go back to normal until Trump is out of office.

It would be great if you could divide people into days, so that for seven days straight the crowds get bigger every single day.

And by that I mean, like, “OK, I can volunteer to do Day 3 onwards. The wife will be there on Day 5… Day 4 if she can get a sitter. ”

Can you imagine the impact that would have? The throngs outside every seat of government and every politician’s home and every other place where the billionaire class can see it just keep getting bigger… and bigger… and bigger…

The idea would be to give them the message that the flood waters are rising and the people are massing and there are far, far too many of us for their money to have a chance of helping them at all.

And all without violence. Hopefully.

The big problem, of course, is that I can’t exactly lead this movement because I am not American. With me at the helm, it would have to be more of an international thing.

Could it be #OccupyEverywhere? After all, the oligarchy is everywhere. Every nation in the world has put up with this crap.

And people everywhere are sick and tired of it.

And I have the perfect day for it – June 14, Trump’s birthday. Instead of a big fancy military parade to show off how tiny a dictator America has, flood the streets with people peacefully protesting him. Bring way more people than will be in his parade.

And be ready to be nice to the soldiers he’s forcing to dance for his obscene amusement. Bring drinks and snacks for them. Commiserate. Put everyone you can find who has ever served at the forefront of their reception.

Remind them what being a soldier in a democracy is supposed to be like. Have picnics and invite them in. Play music. Make it a real day for them.

And everyone else, of course.

The idea is to turn it into something undeniably wholesome and American. Traditional, even, in a non-restrictive sense. Fly flags, hang banners, serve food.

And make it absolutely crystal clear that everybody is invited.

Hell, even Trump himself can show up if he doesn’t expect to get to speak.

And ideally this big blowout protest party would be on Day 7 of my little plan. June 14. Trump’s birthday. A day when, no matter where the billionaires look, there are throngs of people who are very clearly not very happy with them.

We’re going to take it all back from them. We are going to break their stupid system wide open and change all the rules and burn all the corruption and pollution out of the body politic and remake the world into a bigger, better, brighter place.

So help me God.

More after the break.

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The big idea

Everything I just wrote about Occupy America and/or Occupy Everywhere is an objectively fantastic idea. It could, no lie, change the world.

Too bad it was me that came up with it.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m an amazing guy. And some day, maybe I will be healthy enough to be able to take an idea like that and really run with it.

But that day ain’t today.

And that’s tragic and sad. It could be a history making movement, the kind that not only goes down in the history books but that ends up being a national stat holiday along the lines of Bastille Day, or other celebrations of revolutions past.

Today, we mark the day when everything started to get better.

What a lovely idea.

But I don’t have the energy to get it started let alone keep it going. The best I can do is put it on BlueSky and maybe make a video about it and hope against hope that I can somehow get the ball rolling despite being at the bottom of the hill.

I will try to summon what vitality I have in order to breathe life into this thing of mine, but sadly I am not a very robust organism yet.

That’s often the way with us dreamers, isn’t it? The big ideas come from fragile flowers like me who have invested enough of themselves into dreaming that they can think big, but that doesn’t leave a lot left over for a robust connection to the real world.

Perhaps the few of us who become successful revolutionaries and/or the thought leaders of entire world changing movements are the ones who are lucky enough to hook up with a high energy type enthralled by our big ideas and ready to invest their overflowing energies into seeing them brought to fruition.

Now where would a guy find someone like that?

I really should get back on to Discord.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I wrote this and not an AI, I swear!

It was interesting to write my video instead of recording and editing it, but I doubt I will be doing it again any time soon.

I need to be in front of the camera! I need it to be about ME ME ME!

What can I say, I gotta shine.

Descript does seem to have exactly what I am looking for, though. It can take my recorded video and add images and even b-roll to it to make it more professional looking for those who want to actually watch something while I talk.

It would thrill me to no end to be able to create something that looks like a documentary.

It would make me feel all wise and stuff. Like I’m on the BBC! Like my heroes David Attenborough, Desmond Morris, and James Burke!

I am a-tingle just thinking about it.

I’m too modest to claim I don’t have a big ego. At least potentially. I certainly don’t have any limitations as to how high I want to go.

Although I supposed I’d settle for “God-Emperor of Earth”, for the time being at least.

More seriously, the whole territory of my ego is confusing and complex. I am still in the process of integrating my extraordinary abilities into some kind of stable self-image and let me tell you, that’s not easy.

I have to tread the narrow middle path between wretched self-loathing and delusions of grandeur on a daily basis.

In a way it would have been easier to just keep hating myself. But I deserve better than that. I have my flaws but I am overall a truly amazing human being and I deserve to escape this grotty little grotto of mine and get some kind of employment going so that I can finally support myself like a genuine grownup and real human being.

I have so much potential growth all scrunched up inside me, like a rootbound plant.

I need to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.

Also, “cockburn” sounds like something supposedly heterosexual teenage boys give to one another in the locker room.

Now where was I? Oh right.

I have pondered just setting my ego free and seeing how high it would go. Maybe all my worries about delusional psychosis are wildly exaggerated and I would have a bit of a swelled head for a bit then things would rebalance and I’d be perfectly fine.

Better, in fact, because I would have healed a huge wound in my psyche and formed the basis for a much healthier self-image.

But it can be very difficult to separate what will probably happen from what feels like it would happen, and we are, fundamentally, creatures of emotion.

Even big brain types like me who can seem so logical and wise.

No matter what, all human action derives from emotion and there’s nothing wrong with that. Logic is just a tool, a guide toward effective action, but the actions are still going to be driven by emotion.

I could go on and on about that but you nice people have read all that from me before.

Maybe I will do a video about it some day.

If I want to get what I want from Descript, I am going to have to pay for a full membership, and yikes, I just looked it up and it’s $35/month, in USD I assume.

They know what they got is golden. Dammit. I was hoping it would be like other sites and thus be like $15/month or thereabouts.

Well I will pay for a month and then judge whether it was worth the money. If it can do what I want it to do, I suspect it will be.

Unless someone makes a free equivalent!

More after the break.

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They got me

It bugs me that the people at Descript are going to get a hair under $50 from me for one month of their service at an actually useful level.

And even that is far from unlimited. Granted, making 30 hours of clips a month is more than enough for my modest needs, but still.

My grumpy Taurus nature is just rankled by the feeling of getting plucked by these people. I’ll get over it.

I suppose I could look for another, similar service. A poke around Google might show me a cheaper way to get the same thing done.

The problem is that the thing I want from Descript doesn’t have a single, searchable name. I want something to add images and video that go with what I am saying in my video and thus enrich the experience as well as make it seem more professional.

And feed into my dreams of being a documentary host, of course.

I’ve Googled “like Descript” and got some hits but so far none of them do that thing I want it to do.

I know that some fantastically lucky talking head type people have magical people they call “editors” who do all that kind of thing for them.

Oh how I would love that. I’d feel like I was living a charmed life!

Well, semi-charmed, anyway.

Who knows, maybe if I keep honing my skills at putting my thoughts and wisdom out there, I will reach that magic point where the water seeps through the rock and suddenly you emerge into the public consciousness

That whole, “it takes a lot of time and work to become an overnight success” thing.

I at least am hooking my content up with the wider world via YouTube and TikTok these days. So there is, at least, a chance that someone will notice my stuff and spread the world about me.

I’ve already gotten some comments on my YouTube stuff. That’s a start.

Maybe I need to lean in to doing political rants, like Rick Mercer.

Seems like the time is ripe for those.

And there are worse ways to make a living.

I’m just going to keep doing what I do and see what sprouts up.

Because really, who knows?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Holy crap, was this a lot of work to make.

Sometimes I wonder why I ever listen to myself.

Actually, the amount of work it took – almost two hours’ worth – wasn’t a complete surprise to me. When I decided that this would be the time I would put the lyrics on the screen, I knew it would be a lot of work and that I would probably hate myself for starting the stupid project somewhere along the line.

But I was thinking an hour, tops. Yikes.

Oh well, it’s good for me to occasionally get in way over my head with a task. It’s one of the only ways to fool myself into doing more than the bare minimum in life and that’s good for expressing way more of my personal energies than my usual low yield life.

If I do more, I’ll be much happier. I have to keep telling myself that. I have suffered under the tyranny of depression’s soul destroying anti-action bias for far too long. I need to wake the hell up and get involved in life.

If ya know what I mean.

And yeah, I know I’m not a great singer. I think maybe I could be a decent singer if I had the focus and self-discipline to practice and do vocal exercises and such.

Maybe then I could hit those low notes, like the word “sun” on “running naked in the sun”. My voice just disappears there.

Anyhow, my main reason to make karaoke videos is to stretch myself not just vocally but creatively. It’s something unlike my usual talking head stuff and it feels good to expand my capacities that way.

As well as learning what NOT to do.

I originally tried making today’s vid in Descript but it is NOT suited to that task. Sure, the whole “edit the transcript to edit the video” thing is impressive and very cool, but it’s useless for, for instance, trimming the ends of a video or doing any of the other usual video editing things like rearranging clips, fixing audio levels, and so on.

So it’s pretty much only good for talking head videos. Fair enough.

One of these day, my video might just be one of their AI talking heads reading out something I wrote for the occasion.

That could be quite amusing.

I did make this little thing.

Oh that reminds me. Check out the sample text from this voice changer app :

Discover a world where innovation meets elegance. Introducing the Aurora Series – our most advanced collection yet. With cutting-edge technology wrapped in sleek, sustainable design, these devices don’t just perform, they inspire. Aurora – illuminating the path to tomorrow, available worldwide this Friday.

Sample text from elevenlabs.io

Their technology is very impressive but who the hell wrote that text? It’s so pretentiously corporate it makes me want to hurt somebody.

I mean, nobody expects sample text to be Shakespeare, but oy.

I am so very, very sick of bland, bloodless, mindlessly voracious corporations all trying to seem like brilliant forward-seeing creative geniuses, like they just came down the mountain from Palo Alto to share their lofty and advanced vision with us mere mortals.

You’re a bunch of sociopaths in Armani. Get the fuck over yourself.

Been doing OK, mood-wise. My inner world is rather unstable and unsettled, which is to be expected when you’re trying to change very deep, fundamental things about yourself, like your entire attitude toward living.

I’m working on it. Pouring tons of energy and mental might into opening myself up to the world like I am throwing open the drapes and opening the windows in my soul after a long dark musty winter and finally getting some good clean air in here.

Turns out the world is a much happier place when you’re not drowning within yourself.

Who’da thunk it?

More after the break.

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Something has to give

I know that there is a limit to gradualism.

Eventually, something more dramatic is going to need to happen within my psyche. Even if that just means that incrementally I reached a tipping point and the scale flips to the other side because of that, it’s going to have to happen.

Fine. I am willing to continue to consciously devalue stability in favor of long overdue change. Stability is great and all but not when you’re stifling everything inside of you in pursuit of it

And I definitely do not feel as stable as I used to. There is an undercurrent of anxiety in everything I do now. I have these terrible moments where I feel confused and scared and like everything is slipping away from me.

And that’s fine. I know that if I just hang in there, the moment will pass, I will be able to remember that everything is fine, actually, and then I am back in the real world.

Call them growing pains. Or maybe growing pangs.

The real issue is that I don’t know what form this sudden action will take. Obviously I don’t want it to land me in jail, or ruin my relationship with my three friends.

That would be a wee bit too high a price to pay for personal growth.

I suppose I am hoping that it will be something relatively calm and consequence free. I’ll just be laying in bed one day and have some kind of psychological crisis where I feel absolutely awful and freak way the hell out, but then it will pass and I will feel one hell of a lot better because I just processed a whole lot of backed up emotion.

Kind of like having a touch of food poisoning.

But nothing is entirely off the table, legal entanglements aside. I may need to become pushy and irritable just like my late father in order to get to a saner place. I might have to go deeper into outright insanity and stare at the wall a while, or even, god forbid, be a tad psychotic for a bit.

I’ll do what I can to keep things from being too disruptive.

But if I have to lose my mind to find myself, so be it.

Today’s video is anything but… nondescript.

That’s because it’s my first video made entirely in Descript, that website/app I’ve been talking about lately.

And I have to say, I’m not sure if Descript made it all that much easier.

Obviously it’s a little easier to edit a transcript than it is to edit video, and it’s entirely possible I was able to find and remove a lot more of my ums and ahs than I am when I am editing the old fashioned way, but I still dunno.

I will at the very least try it again. It could be that once I am more familiar with Descript, and therefore more relaxed when using it, it will obviously way, way easier.

It’s worth a shot.

Plus messing around with Descript was kinda fun.

On to the subject of the vid. It all started with this animation.

Like I say in the vid, that got me thinking about the whole subject of a lack of social awareness and how it can cause grave levels of misunderstanding.

Especially amongst us nerdy folk.

As I have mentioned before, I consider being a nerd to be a mild form of Asperger’s the same way Asperger’s is a mild form of autism.

And the key to the whole thing seems to be the social awareness I talk about in the vid. “Normal” people have it, but for the most part, they don’t know they have it and are therefore unable to articulate it.

After all, nobody explained it to them. It’s something they learned via social interaction and I think the heart of that might just be the desire to “fit in”.

In trying to fit in, they tap into an intuitive sense of what the other monkeys are thinking and doing and adjust their behaviour in order to remain in sync with them.

This is all going on subconsciously, for the most part. It does not involve the rational, conscious mind at all. And that’s where the problem starts.

Growing up nerdy means “choosing” (in the purely developmental sense) to focus on the sort of logical abstract reasoning skills that things like school rely on.

This often leads to introversion, as said skills require a very robust ability to listen to one’s “inner voice”, and that requires screening out the outer world.

But the outer world is exactly where that social awareness comes from.

Basically, you can’t learn social skills if you’re all wrapped up in yourself.

Hence the continuum of nerdiness and sociability. It really does seem like the more nerdy you are, the less socially skilled you are, as if there is a finite amount of potential and the more you invest in one end of the scale, the less you have for the other.

Seems vaguely unfair.

But like I said in the vid, that does mean there are compensations for one’s lack of a social cue. We tend to do quite well in school, and in general have a strong grasp of abstract reasoning in all its forms, and that leads to a certain point of view.

One based on “leading with your head”, in other words, dealing with the world primarily through one’s abstract reasoning skills and not through other faculties like social awareness, empathy, and intuition.

Those without our advanced mental faculties have no choice but to rely on those other faculties in order to navigate through life.

That’s the main reason there is such a disconnect between us nerdy left wing liberal types and the more middling masses.

We don’t speak one another’s languages, so to speak.

But as the “smarter” half of the equation, it is incumbent upon us to learn their lingo. To learn to see the world through their eyes, without judgment or criticism, and through that learn to lead them in the right direction.

In many ways, we’re the grownups of the world. And it’s up to us to raise the kids right.

More after the break.

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They just can’t

To carry on where I just left off (for once) :

Let’s take another stab at one of ghosts that haunts me, one that just becomes more solid and real as time goes by : what if the average person simply cannot see the world the way a liberal intellectual like myself does?

Their hardware can’t run our software. And it doesn’t matter how articulate, or compassionate, or “nice” we are, there is a complexity to our thought processes and point of view that their brains simply cannot handle.

If so, then our capacity for compassion and understanding will truly be tested because it would mean that to get through to them, we have to communicate with them in a way that we ourselves would find insulting.

We have to talk to them like they’re idiots, essentially, or what we would interpret as such if it was directed as us.

And yet, we also have to avoid talking down to them. That would even worse than just talking over their heads.

It’s a very difficult needle to thread, I will admit.

But it may well be what we have to do to lead them effectively. And it’s better than constantly beating our brains out trying to get them to see things our way when it is entirely possible that they simply cannot.

This is a traumatic thought, I realize. I don’t like thinking about it and I’m the one who thought it up in the first place. It flies in the face of the egalitarian roots of modern society which necessitate viewing everyone as fundamentally equal.

And I’m not suggesting there is a moral difference or a difference in worth between us and them. I am vehemently anti-elitist.

Which is probably why discussing this subject at all makes me feel queasy.

But equal worth does not necessarily equate to equal intellect. And it could be that for us to truly encompass this extremely unpalatable truth, we might just have to dig our own intellectual elitism out by the roots.

A stupid person has the same human worth as a smart person.

Bet you thought you already thought that, right?

But did you really?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well at least I am feeling more awake now.

I’m certainly never going to let THAT happen again.

What I should have done is just taken a nap and pushed the video making to later in the day, when I could do it properly.

But that’s exactly the sort of thing that doesn’t occur to me when I am sleepy.

Ah well, it’s water under the bridge now. It’s not like I have disappointed my legions of followers or anything.

My just under 200 subscribers will just have to deal with it.

Were I a far more organized and ambitious type, I would be working my ass off to try to get that up to at least 500 subscribers because then I could start making money from the videos I post.

At least, in theory. People would still have to watch the dang things, too.

And you know, maybe one day I will have my excrement concentrated to that point. I can certainly envision that possibility. I can see myself busting my butt to make high quality videos with mass appeal and really making a go of this whole thing.

But um, not yet. I would need to be considerably more awake first. I am still in the process of exiting my long lonely state of stupefaction and so being able to summon that kind of energy and enthusiasm and confidence is still a tad beyond me.

But there’s still that idea for a satirical news program to ponder.

I could really make something like that work, ya know?

So who knows, maybe today’s sad little video will serve a purpose. Maybe this near-failure will give me a kick in the rear and get me to try harder.

But man do I miss caffeine sometimes.

I’ve been playing around with a rather extraordinary website/app called Descript, trying to get it to work for me, because it could save me a heck of a lot of effort.

The idea is that you feed your video to Descript and it generates a transcript of it and then you can edit the video by editing the transcript.

And it has the ability to automatically detect and delete your ums, ahs, stutters, and so on, and that’s basically all I am doing when I edit my vids.

So in theory it could almost automate the whole deal, leaving me to concentrate on improving the content in other ways.

Which would be rad.

It does a whole lot of other amazing stuff too, like AI video and speech generation. meaning I could write a script and it would generate a talking head video complete with a presented and their voice for me.

That’s not how I roll but I can see possibilities for that. Like using that capacity to generate “actors” for my skits.

I could write stuff that’s just me communicating with other talking heads, like we’re on a Zoom call or the like.

For now, though, I am just messing around with Descript’s video editing function. Editing the transcript is a lot less mental work than editing the video itself, and it makes it easier to get all of my little stutters and such.

We are gradually getting to the point where I could just give an AI a screenplay and it would spit out a movie.

The acting might not be great, though. It would be pretty hard to train an AI to get that right given it’s not easy to get people to do it right.

It could probably make intelligent guesses as to the proper emotion based on context clues, but of course, acting is all about the subtle nuances.

Just like with reading faces, we human beings can detect the tiniest of variances in how something is said in order to pick up on the emotional content of our speech.

It’ll be a long time before an AI can do that.

More after the break.

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Not frigging bad

I decided to try out Descript’s AI talking head feature.

This is the result.

And I have got to admit, my dude there sounds a lot more human and natural than I thought he would.

I can see uses for this.

One odd but not dealbreaking thing : it took a weirdly long time to generate that little vid.

As in, it’s only a paragraph and a half long yet it took ten minutes plus to generate it, and I can’t see why. It’s a pretty simple thing.

My dude doesn’t even move much.

But it could be like with image generation, where in order to get high quality results, you have to let the computer make a LOT of passes at rendering the result, each pass refining it a little bit more.

Or it could be that because I am using a free account, their system ain’t exactly in a hurry to process my request, and if I want quicker results, I should pay up.

Or it could be both, I suppose.

Whatever. At minimum, I have a way fun new toy to poke around with for a while. One that I might conceivably have a use for in the future.

Not today though. Today has been sleepy. As seen in today’s rather minimalist vid.

I don’t think I’m sick. Other than the sleepiness, I feel fine. I have a little bit of a runny nose from seasonal allergies but that’s about it.

But I will keep an eye on the situation. While making sure to keep up the hydration, even when I don’t feel like it, to avoid feelings like I need a trip to the ER when all I really need is a tall glass of water from the Brita filter jug.

I wonder if I could get one of those Brita filters that attach to the sink to work with the sink in my bathroom.

I bet that would improve my urinary health. Keep me truly flushed out.

Something to think about re : birthday presents.

I should write about what I want for my birthday soon, in case it matters.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

The good kind. The FUN kind. The kind where I get to defend my beliefs.

The kind just like this :

And let me tell you, I am in my element as I take these “liberals'” outrageous bigotry and throw it in their face.

Aren’t we supposed to be better than that? Isn’t unrelenting, irrational, immoral hate based on a stereotype of people you think are “all the same” supposedly their thing?

Aren’t we the nice ones?

And the thing is, my position is unassailable. Liberalism is rooted in humanism and humanism clearly states that we are all human and vulnerable and weak and fallible and that none of the superficial group-think bullshit we invent to divide us from them really matters because we are all, in the end, only human.

Certainly nothing as petty and ephemeral as politics should keep us from seeing the humanity even in those unlike us.

Humanism states that we are all far more alike than different and that is true scientifically, morally, psychologically, and physically.

Go ahead, try, as a liberal, to argue that Trump voters are somehow less than human, or that they don’t have the same rights as you, or that “they are all the same”.

And I will always stand up for greater compassion and true humanity and real understanding between people, no matter the consequences. I can do no less. What I believe comes from the very heart of my being and that means that I have to act on them or die inside.

And I prefer to avoid that.

So as I prick people’s consciences and challenge their preconceived notions and get them to think about and examine their biases and prejudices, I am, naturally, having the time of my life.

This is what us trickster types live for.

It’s simple : view Trumpeters with the same sympathy and compassion you think they should show you.

The moral mirror never lies. And it is impossible to argue that someone should treat you better than how you treat them.

Our basic moral programming rejects that idea outright.

The trickster’s job, ultimately, is to wake people up and make them think. People are, of course, rarely grateful for that. They prefer to remain in the daze of routine, where every day is just like all the others and nothing they do really matters to them.

Actually, I take that back. That’s too harsh and judgmental.

How inhuman of me.

See, I don’t claim to be immune to those temptations.

And now for something completely different : learn to speak fox!

Turns out we foxies make all kinds of sounds, many of them hard on the ears. I’ve been pondering adding some of them to Fruvous’ repertoire but ehh.

Might not be all that cute or charming, to be honest.

Today’s been pretty decent. Had therapy at 1 pm today instead of yesterday.

That was mildly novel. My therapist travels back and forth to Calgary a lot so sometimes our therapy times get shifted around.

Speaking of which, did Wound Care at 3 pm today, which was very novel. Usually we have it in the morning.

Except apparently, according to them, the appointment was at 3:15 pm. That’s not what it said on our printed schedule.

They gotta stop doing that shit with us.

After that, we stopped at McD’s so I could get a cone to celebrate the first day of 2025 where I could go outside without a coat.

I was the tiniest bit cold here and there but I don’t care. I always love finally being able to go out coatless after winter. It always feels so freeing, and not needing protection from the cold makes the world seem so much friendlier.

Then we came home, I finished editing today’s video, ordered my grocers, managed to keep the bill under $70, and now I am going to finish blogging so I can flop.

All in all, a pretty full day.

Beats spinning my wheels playing video games, that’s for sure!

More after the break.

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Very important science

This study really unlocks the secrets of the universe :

I saw something about this study a very long time ago and it blew my mind because it starkly reveals a hell of a lot about the sad state of the world.

And that was way before our current era of oligarchy!

Wealth is a terrible influence. It makes people objectively worse human beings. And it absolutely does not matter how the wealth was acquired.

It spoils the self made millionaire, the trust fund baby, and the lotto winner alike.

I bet that if you surveyed lottery winners one year after their win and asked them how they got to be so rich, they’d be sort of fuzzy on the details.

For sure they would not say, “Pure dumb luck”.

And it’s not hard to see why. We humans are born with an urge to seek status. Wealth gives us that status. With that kind of prize, is it any wonder that people kind of forget how they got the money and start to feel like their new high status lifestyle reflects something intrinsic about themselves and not just a number with their name attached.

And this sense of inflated status is what really brings out the ugly side of people, especially because it is coupled with the infantilizing influence of living in a world where everybody is there specifically to make and keep you happy.

So people devolve into emotional infancy. They become selfish, rude, short-tempered, demanding, and callous.

They are now high status toddlers, and so we have the perfect recipe for creating people uniquely unsuited to wield the enormous power they now have.

The only solution I can see is a wealth cap. Above, say, 250 million dollars, wealth is taxed at 99.9 percent and if people don’t like that, tough.

Trust me, Joe Six-Pack, it ain’t ever gonna be a problem for you.

At the same time, strong measures to limit the power of wealth need to be implemented. Most people have no problem with the rich living lives of opulence, decades, glamour, and excess. More power to them, really.

It’s when the money gives them power over the government that we have a problem.

I’ll talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I decided to steal some today.

Like I say in the vid, I just wanted to make sure I had that ability.

I might use it for compilation videos, though I would be more likely to do compilations of bits from my own videos and I don’t have to download those = they’re already here.

Funny how that works.

But doing my own funny take on the news type show is a real possibility. Especially if I fail to get that Onion job.

What the hell, I’m funny with or without them. (But please, please hire me. )

I’m annoyed with myself that I haven’t sent my application in yet. I suppose I am hesitating out of fear, at least in part.

Which is silly. Worst thing that can happen is they say no, which is probable. I will presumably be up against thousands of other applicants.

But I’ve got to take my shot.

After all, I’m hilarious.

And that $100K/year CND sounds awfully good.

But my own funny hot take type show would be good too. And pretty easy to produce over all, really.

The “desk joke” format is pretty easy to put together. Clip, riff, repeat. The news clip is the setup and you just need to provide the punchline, more or less.

Pulling off a “newsroom” look would require a little work. For one thing, I would have to come up with some way to look at least a little respectable.

My usual array of T-shirts don’t exactly scream “news anchor”.

Then again, maybe I could make that work for me. Instead of trying to come across as a news anchor, just go with my strengths as just some guy on the internet.

After all, the real product is my sharp and incisive wit. Trying to come across as a parody of a news anchor would be the traditional way to do satirical news, but at the same time it’s kinda old n’ busted now.

And since when have I been traditional?

So who knows. Maybe I’d use a persona closer to my real self, a sort of every-nerd maybe, or heck, your next door neighbor sitting on his couch with a beer.

Or just be myself. What a radical idea.

“And now, with the news, we have… me!”

Hmmm. Dunno if I could pull it off.

It would also, of course, be a vehicle for my politics. You can’t really do political satire without a political POV, especially these days when even simply reporting the facts in a neutral and objective way fit for the BBC World News is seen as biased.

So fuck it. I’m biased. I’m a bleeding heart liberal socialist commie cucktard faggot and I am proud of it.

Now what are you going to do?

I’m your worst nightmare, fuckheads.

And given the dire times we live in, I’m not inclined to hold my tongue about anything.

It’s the sort of format I could live with. Generally speaking, I am quite format averse as, for me, what it essential is that I express myself and formats demand doing what they demand instead, and I ain’t about that.

But riffing on the news would provide a fair bit of variety, and I can pick and choose what news stories to riff on, so I could probably live with that.

My format is “whatever I have the funniest jokes about”. Or somesuch.

I wonder what the legalities of using news clips is. Clearly it’s allowed in some circumstances. But would I need a corporation to back me?

Or would I use bad re-enactments of the clips instead?

And what about just using the audio? The whole thing could be a podcast.

Or I could add a phone filter and pretend I’m on the phone with famous people.

I’ve got a lot of ideas.

More after the break.

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The die is cast

Welp, I did it. I have applied to write for the Onion. I think.

They have my hilarious and charming cover letter, and my equally uproarious and engaging resume, at least.

But the website never asked me for my 30 headlines, so they continue to lie in wait.

Oh well, gives me more chance to work on them, anyhow.

I imagine that there was no place for my headlines because I was applying through some job website called Gusto (ick) and nobody at Gusto (ick) knew they needed such a thing so they just slapped together the most basic page possible (name, cover letter PDF submit, resume PDF submit) and called it a day.

I guess if the Onion likes those, they’ll ask for the headlines?

I, of course, went all out with them. If I get rejected by the Onion (which is probable), I will post them here for you, my gold plated fans, to enjoy.

But I really packed them with my signature wacky wit, and I have a feeling that the Onion and I might have a similar sense of humour, as this is their LinkedIn profile :

The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.

Yup. These are totally my kind of people. My cover letter and resume should fight right in to their editorial milieu.

There is, of course, still the question of whether I would have to relocate. Which of course I am willing to do, but boy would I rather not.

I’m lucky enough to already be outside Trump’s America. And I have already escaped the United States twice.

What are the odds I will make it out now, when the border guards might actually be awake and paying attention?

Then again, what’s the worst they can do? Deport me the 100 feet to the Canadian border? Oh darn.

I wonder if the Onion would arrange a work visa for me?

But I am, perhaps, getting way ahead of myself.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

You know, if what you want is hot takes with no filter, I’m kind of your guy.

I don’t even edit.

It felt good to get my various confessions out.

The only possible plausible explanation for how I get away with only ever doing a single draft is the one I mention in the vid, that I must be incredibly talented.

And honestly, that ain’t even half of it, because what I failed to mention in the above is that only did I never do a second draft at any level of my education, writing that first draft was super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Never in my entire educational history have I felt seriously challenged. When I was going to VFS, it was only in the final semester that I felt any strain.

So much for the big scary “intensive” program.

And honestly, that should have pointed to my having stellar life prospects. I could have gone into any number of historically academically challenging fields like law or medicine or business and kicked royal ass and then, who knows?

But I had no guidance from anyone as a teen. I mean, the guidance counselors were pathetic jokes. The one in junior high was a total knob and the two in my high school had absolutely no interest in doing their jobs.

All it would have taken was for someone to sit me down and tell me that I was very, very gifted and needed to apply for every scholarship under the sun so I could afford to go to a decent university that could offer me real prospects as opposed to the second worst college in Canada, UPEI.

On my own and with nobody to tell me where to go and what to do, I was far too lacking in ambition and focus to think to do any of that when I was a teen. On my own, I’m a happy go lucky directionless wanderer who doesn’t think much about the future.

Or at least I was. I am getting over that now.

I want things, dammit. Like a job. And a husband. And a HOUSE.

I suppose I should get over being embarrassed by my excellence. I mean, what purpose does that serve? It’s not my fault if my amazingness makes somebody else feel bad by comparison.

Someone like my brother. I get the feeling that his jealousy had a much larger impact on my life than I’ve ever considered before.

Well fuck that. I’m a brilliant scintillating star and I’m going to shine, shine, shine.

And I’m going to get some fucking respect while I’m at it, too. By any measure, I practically have superpowers, and this hero’s got to fly.

Looks like our little robot alien boy is finally growing up.

The other big confession was the fact that I don’t edit. And I get away with it. There was a time when I honestly thought I would reach a point where my first drafts wouldn’t be good enough any more and that would be my wake up call to get serious and buckle down and actual write like a normal person.

But nope. Never happened. Maybe if I had gone on to graduate school I would have finally met my match, or at least found some degree of challenge, but maybe not.

Maybe I could have sailed through law school and pass the bar with flying colors and made a career as an ass kicking lawyer who fights for the little guy.

I would love to be one of those lawyers who forces insurance companies to pay out when they are trying to get away with stiffing some regular person or people.

Call me. I’ll make the bastards pay.

I feel a thrill just typing that.

More after the break.

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My feeling of power

It’s probably overblown. By a lot.

But even if it isn’t – even if I walk godlike amongst the mere mortals of the world and they should tremble at my might – I’ve got to get some kind of handle on it.

Right now, it mostly underwrites my fears. As if I am Gulliver in Lilliput and I have to be infinitely careful how I move or speak lest I crush the life out of the tiny creatures who swarm around my feet.

I don’t know where this sense of my own gigantism came from. Probably in elementary school, when I first realized how different I was from the other kids. How I towered above them intellectually.

But that doesn’t explain this stultifying sense of responsibility. I don’t know why I feel like I have to tread so very carefully.

So carefully, in fact, that my best option is to just not go anywhere.

Can’t step on anybody if you don’t move, right?

Perhaps it was born that day when two different philosophy teachers, completely independently of one another, took it upon themselves to ask me to stop dominating class discussions and give other people a chance to speak.

Maybe I took that lesson way too hard. I know that by the time the second teacher was half way through their speech, I felt really bad about the whole thing.

Especially because I’d had no idea I was doing it. I suppose back then I would have assumed that you had to choose to do evil.

And it came just as I was really starting to “feel my oats” as an intellectual.

Maybe I should have taken the asshole route and said, “Hey, if they can’t hold their own against me when I talk, too freaking bad. Get stronger or shut up. ”

That would have made me a horrible human being, but possibly a much more successful and happy and competent one.

I’d have something upon which to construct a positive image of myself.

And I probably would have gotten over myself eventually. Probably.

Well it’s too late for that now. You can get away with a lot at the age of 19 that you could never get away with at 51.

Besides, I know better now.

In conclusion, I am still trying to integrate my abilities into my sense of self without losing my mind completely.

I’m working on it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.