Monthly Archives: April 2022

More Bullet-Pointed Goodness

As the title of this post states…

  • Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter yesterday brought a drastic, tire-squealing reversal to my fleeing Facebook (at least temporarily.) Facebook suddenly became the lesser of two otherwise extreme evils. I’m going to need to rethink my approach to maintaining an online presence. Using this site far more often remains the core to whatever I decide moving forward, but the fact its that while I have more control over how I post here, posting 2-3 sentence (or smaller) entries on this site doesn’t feel right. Furthermore, I’m not aware at this time of a WordPress feature that allows me to quickly and easily share photos, and tag the location and people I’m with the way Facebook does. Admittedly, Twitter doesn’t have a nice easy way to simultaneously share, manage, and curate photos either, but the smaller posts were right at home there. In regards to the Twitter-sized posts, I certainly should simply get over myself and start putting them on this site.
  • Last year I watched 50 episodes of MST3K and thought that it would be difficult of top it. Last night, I watched my 24th so far this year. At this rate, this 2022’s total will be over 70 movies riffed by MST3K or one its alumni riff groups. The frightening thing is 120 films isn’t even half of what I own. Yes, I own a significant collection of crappy movies containing mocking commentary.
  • As much as I’ve fallen in love with Tears for Fears’s new album, The Tipping Point, I couldn’t bring myself to buy tickets for their show at The Merriweather Post Pavilion this summer. By the time I looked at ticket prices, lawn seats were the only realistic option, and frankly, if I’m going to sit for hours at a concert, I’m going to need a proper chair. I’ll try to catch them the next time a tour brings them through the area.
  • Text from a post I made on Twitter yesterday: “I’m on day #17 of a planned dry month. I don’t think I’ve ever come close to being this dissatisfied with a healthy lifestyle choice.” Seriously, I need to come up with some other coping mechanisms for experiencing this country’s descent into true dystopian authoritarianism. Given that my two favorite means of coping — the other being stress earring — are currently off the table, I need to figure out another means to deal with maintaining awareness of what is happening in the world around me.
  • Rather than simply imply it, I’m going to state it outright: living in America right now must be an amazing analog for what it felt like to live in Germany in 1932. Either that, or we are in fact in The Bad Place.
  • As was true yesterday, more in another post later today, or tomorrow.

Two+ Months Later…

It’s been a couple months since the last post here. So, in a futile effort to play catch up and to jump start yet another effort (in a countless string of them) to post here more regularly, I bring you bullet points!

  • I have once again decided I could no longer in good conscience feed the Facebook beast. I let myself slip back into old habits after making my first such declaration earlier this year before getting reminded why I initially made the decision. Of course, now that I am staying away and making it stick (so far,) along comes Elon Musk and his personal brand of multifaceted toxicity and his Lex Luther-like goal of owning Twitter in its entirety.
  • Text from a post I made on Twitter last week: “Of the possible futures avid 16-year-old SF fan me envisioned inhabiting after turning 50, he never imagined living in a toxic late-stage capitalistic state teetering on the edge of true dystopian authoritarianism pursued by a political party overtaken by Christian nationalism.”
  • Self-assesment after turning 50 last month: the looming dystopian nightmare aside, I’m actually very happy with nearly every aspect of my personal life right now. As always, there are a couple areas of personal improvement I’m actively working on, but otherwise I think 16-year-old me would be thrilled to have had a sneak peak into the man he evolved into at this age. Embracing my inner weirdo and letting my freak/geek flag fly has only made me a happier person.
  • A couple weeks after the mini-vacation, Sally and I made an overnight visit to Staunton, VA, quite possibly our favorite locale for such getaways. We didn’t post anything online during our trip (quite possibly a first for us, but also not surprising given my growing distaste for the array of social media sites currently at our disposal,) mostly because it was “uneventful.” That’s not a damning statement — we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly — but there was nothing noteworthy that hadn’t already happened multiple times during previous visits over the years. Sometimes, what you need when you get away from home is a different kind of familiarity and routine. Staunton is that for us.
  • Clearly, I haven’t been making weekly accountability posts. In the past, this typically meant that I started putting back weight again. Not this time, however. I have now taken off all the weight I put on at the end of last year and proceeded to continue past where I was at the beginning of October. As of this morning, I’ve lost 35.2 lb since May 6 (16.8 since the start of this year.) I’m going to defer any commentary about this until I make my next standalone accountability post 11 days from now.
  • More in another post later today, or tomorrow. (No, really, I swear it will happen!)