Unexciting Daily Musings

We played multiple games of online chess today and he was beating me into next Tuesday. Tending to my bruised ego I told him to “Take it easy on me. I’m only 12 years old.” He replied telling me he is a depressed 30-year-old man from Nigeria. Being a 12-year-old I consoled him by telling him eating cookies makes me feel happy. He said cookies aren’t available to him. As our conversation advanced, he offered to teach me how to hack credit cards but he said he couldn’t speak about it through unsecured channels. His various attempts at luring me into communication through Whatsapp failed. I’m only 12 years old, my parents would not approve of such behaviour.

I asked myself last week what would I want in my possession if nuclear war occurs. My conclusion was a package of cookies so I procured some in case shit hits the fan. I can’t imagine a more comforting picture than me sitting on the floor eating cookies straight out of the package waiting for the end.

My cheapness has been flaring up recently. Today, instead of eating out I took a piece of chicken breast from the freezer and dumped it in a pot with macaroni, cabbage, onions and ham to make soup. I’ve also been listing items on Facebook Marketplace to scrounge up funds from my many useless possessions. An acceptable offer of $30 for my small kettlebell had been made but I declined. Similar to being awarded an interview when applying for a job I felt regret for my disingenuous solicitation. I’ve grown attached to the kettlebell like it’s a pet rock. Pet rocks were apparently a thing in the 1980s.

One of Life’s Random Surprises

A former coworker messaged me a few minutes ago through Facebook Marketplace not knowing who I was. My face and name are not displayed so she can’t possibly have a clue. I remember her but not much. I guess I never hated her since I don’t remember hating her. The only 2 memories I have of her were 5 second interactions. The first, she was in the parking lot walking to the building to start her shift when she said, “Can someone remind me why I come here every morning?”…an indirect admission that she disliked doing this job. The second, when it was announced in the morning meeting that it was my last day of employment there. She said, “You’re quitting? Good for you.” Everyone had me pegged for a lifer given that I was in my 30s, possessed no skilled training and had been there for 7 years. My 2 options now are to behave as if this a normal potential transaction or to mess around with her like an anonymous stalker. I don’t have to tell you which one would be much more amusing.

In January I bought an 8-pack of blue collar beer(made by the people, for the people) which took me nearly 2 months to finish. Since then I’ve been entertaining the idea to stop drinking alcohol aside from the odd beer. For whatever reason I no longer feel much of a desire to drink. An autobiography I just finished reading is about the life story of a well-known former hockey player. He drank, a lot. There’s people out there who have incredible physical and mental genetics. He tells tales of him drinking through the night to early morning as well as snorting cocaine and then heading straight to practice without any sleep. His drug abuse and self-abuse did not affect his performance in the ice rink playing against the best in the world. You have to be honest with yourself at some point in life and ask yourself what your edge is. Your edge, if you have one, is the only thing that will take you past average. Many people have no edge in their chosen field of employment which leaves them in the category of being only good enough to get themselves in trouble.

I’ll leave you with a quote I discovered this week.

“The only measure of success is how much time you have to kill“

-Nassim Taleb

Reporting on the State of the World

COVID cases in China have spiked causing another shutdown in various regions. A comparatively low vaccination rate and a zero-Covid policy are to blame for the massive spike in infections and death. Since China is a major manufacturing hub, the shutdowns will increase strain on the current supply chain issues which will likely affect inflation which is already at its highest since the 1980s. Why do you care? Shit’s gonna get more expensive(your money is worth less).

The Russia-Ukraine war which has led to the price of oil spiking will also make your shit more expensive and possibly cause a recession. If you lose your job because of a recession then shit will get really expensive for you. And if you own stocks? God help you. For that you can blame Putin and all of the people who took their miserable time to get vaccinated if they did at all. Of course, this will be the least of your worries if there’s going to be a World War 3. One has to be suspicious of the timing of this invasion.

I went to the same restaurant twice in a span of 2 months and they raised the price of a bowl of noodles from $13.95 to $15.95. Three years ago it was $10.50. When you get old enough to experience a doubling in prices due to inflation, you might become anchored to the prices of 20 years ago which is roughly how long it takes for inflation to cause a doubling in prices. I’m still looking for that $3 sandwich. Old people talk about how chocolate bars used to be 5 cents. A nickel is the new penny. If you had a nickel for every time you heard people say the same thing you wouldn’t even have a chocolate bar.

Mask mandates have been lifted where I live. Freedom!! Oddly, or not, most people seem to be still wearing them. See, there’s other benefits to wearing a mask that people did not recognize in the beginning. Masks keep your face warm in the winter weather, if you’re ugly it makes you less ugly, helps you remain anonymous everywhere you go, lowers your chances of getting the common flu and cold. The new normal is that people are disgusting parasites.

Buy, Store, Hate, Sell, Crazy

I spent much of the late afternoon organizing my worthless sports cards so that I can dispose most of them. As I was organizing them in numerical order it dawned on me that I could be doing something more seemingly useful like reading an informative book. A few years ago when an Amway representative was trying to recruit(they hate that term) me, he said something interesting.

“If you don’t read books then you might as well be illiterate.”

Most people need to read menus but I got the point.

Organizing my cards was the route I took because it was the easy way out. Perhaps not quite as easy as laying around but easy as possible without doing absolutely nothing. I wonder if this is why some people protest or “fight for freedom” as some of them call it. Walking around while holding a sign with masses of people is stimulating and can feel meaningful even if they know deep inside they’re just being a nuisance.

Yesterday, the schizophrenic lady was walking by with her dog when she called Sandy, the lady I was talking to, a “racist lady.” They’re both white and have lived next to each other for 24 years. My first thought was that the crazy lady must be acting crazy and that Sandy isn’t a racist. When I arrived home I remembered something that someone told me about Sandy where she asked an Asian guy if he was Chinese. He said he wasn’t and she replied, “good, that means you probably don’t have the coronavirus.” Although it’s not necessarily racist it could be perceived as so. If nothing else it’s stupid. So I’m thinking now that maybe the crazy lady has some reason to believe Sandy is racist given that the crazy lady’s husband is Asian and Sandy is kind of stupid. Is the guy who flees city life to live in the woods by himself crazy or is he separating himself from crazy people?

So I feel that I’m on a quest towards minimalism again as I was a decade ago. I’m confident I could live without 80% of my belongings without regret but hoarding is a biological instinct. The man I used to live with when I was a kid used to say, “I don’t throw things away because you never know when you’ll need it.” Maybe but is it worth hoarding everything just in case a couple things come in handy over the next 30 years? A more contemporary theory says you can get rid of anything you haven’t used in a year or 2, something like that. It’s a cycle of collecting things out of boredom or prosperity and then disposing of them because of necessity or contempt. Shiny new toys can become space-takers requiring dusting. What have you done for me lately, old toy?

Evolution of Social Media

It’s interesting that most people’s Facebook and Instagram profiles are set to private where in the past it was far less common. Perhaps people have had a long enough timeline to experiment and have concluded that having people they don’t care about viewing their public profile brings no advantages. The ego dissolves in areas where it is not being adequately fed.

The evolution of social media has been an unpredictable one. MySpace was the king but was made extinct by Facebook for reasons not so obvious. It was easy to see how the iPhone disrupted the Blackberry device and how Netflix disrupted video rentals. As far as I can remember, when Facebook first launched, all that anyone talked about was how everyone was joining because it was so much easier to find old friends and acquaintances. So Facebook beat MySpace and Friendster because it created a more appealling platform for people to be nosy.

Facebook is now considered to be social media for old people. TikTok is now the app that the younger generation prefer. I suspect people will grow tired of TikTok and that it is mostly a fad, because it requires too much energy to create those videos. I downloaded TikTok a while ago and deleted it shortly after because of the blaring audio accompanying every video. Of course, lack of energy and noise are things generally only older people complain about. I’m also at that age where I often prefer to watch an older movie that I’ve watched many times rather than a new one. Oh yeah, new music sucks. And I don’t fully understand all of this LGBT and BIPOC stuff. My take is, if you have a dick then you go to the men’s washroom. Why do we need to complicate things? I’m turning conservative and want everyone to take responsibility for their bullshit. I’m becoming similar to an old white racist guy who can sometimes get a pass for using the N-word. “You have to understand, Ralph was born in 1935 when it was illegal to be gay.”

Social media is now rumoured to be moving towards the metaverse which is rumoured to be the next real life. As with everything, people are demonizing this evolution and predicting it will be the end of us. I believe we are already living in a metaverse, a primitive version. So here I am, typing my thoughts which will be sent into the world for you to see from my account which is under a fake name and avatar. You read it with your account with a fake name and avatar, and “like” it, or not. You may write a comment and we both believe it was all a real interaction. 30 years ago someone might call this crazy and tell you how it would never work, that people wouldn’t waste their time writing to no one when they could have a real conversation over the telephone. “I like my flip phone, it has real buttons”

Philosophy

It was not expected but watching a short video on the teachings of a pessimistic philosopher made me feel better. He theorized that avoiding misery is a better path than chasing pleasure since happiness is fleeting. He also believes, our sense of purpose is driven by our “will to live” which is what causes us to act foolishly and suffer the many unnecessary consequences in life. I think his philosophy gave me solace because I’m good at doing nothing.

A life without any euphoria or at least the anticipation of it does not seem to be a life worth living. I surmise that chasing pleasure is fine as long as it does not lead to unbearable misery. Unfortunately, we often underestimate the misery involved as well as our ability to tolerate it. “I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

Coincidentally, and I rarely believe in coincidences, I came across the same quote from 2 very different sources in the same day. They both quoted Rudyard Kipling’s line, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster. And treat them both the same.” If you can do this then you’re more suited to be a pleasure chaser. You won’t be “woohoo!!” at the highs or “god dammit, crap, shit, NO” at the lows.

In a book I was briefly reading today, the author suggested while truth is the road to enlightenment, if you’re comfortably in a bubble of joy through ignorance then stay in it. Although the truth may seem it should be paramount, the journey towards it and in it is not necessarily worth it since life is finite. The only flaw in being in a happy bubble of lies is that if the end is imminent leading to a long road of misery. A journey for truth should only be taken if it’s what you need.

Your philosophy for life will likely depend on your current situation and development in life. Although there isn’t a one size fits all there’s often one size that fits everyone better. Sometimes you just need to lose some weight or make some alterations to make it fit well.

Sell Sell Sell

A couple of days ago I began listing toy figures from my personal collection on to Facebook MarketPlace. Someone in the neighbourhood convinced me to give it a try after telling me how much more attention it gets over Craigslist. Holy shit was she ever right. I’m getting messages for my collectibles like a woman with tits and an okay-looking face on a dating site. The only way I could have received fewer responses through Craigslist was if I listed used face masks for sale. I’m hardly exaggerating. People don’t even bother to check CL for a possible better deal. It’s like CL is Radio Shack when you live a block away from Best Buy.

In 1998 I bought a pair of home tower speakers from Radio Shack. The salesman there mocked my retail clerk position I had across the street. He said, “you don’t know where the money is.” He was right, it was a stupid place to work at. What’s even the point of working for $7.50 an hour? Every hour you work you get to buy yourself a sandwich. It actually might not be better than nothing. Radio Shack is now extinct and no one buys tower speakers anymore except maybe through Craigslist. It’s yet to be seen though if any of these MarketPlace jokers pull through.

Cutting People Off

It was 10 AM and the strip mall parking lot was near empty. I’m sitting as a passenger in his vehicle watching him back into a handicap parking spot. We’re volunteers for a seniors program that loans us handicap parking permits for when we drive senior citizens.

“Why are you parking in a handicap spot? Are you disabled?” I ask.

“It’s okay. There’s lots of other spaces,” he replies.

There’s some logic to that, I guess. I had to plead with him to park in one of the 40 other available parking spots. Having coffee with him, I kept debating to myself if this would be the last time I would ever intentionally hang out with him. It wouldn’t be but for the next few occasions I would bring up the disabled parking situation.

“Why do you park in the handicap spots?”

“What do your kids say?”

“Why do you park in the handicap spots?”

I’m no stranger to cutting people out of my life. I don’t care how much blood we share or how long we’ve known each other; if I see something I’m deeply against that doesn’t get addressed adequately and in my opinion does not have much probability of changing then I’ll cut them off. It seems that many people won’t tell someone to screw off unless if they’re dealing with a child molester in the company of their children.

I’ve had thieves and unsavory characters in my group of former friends who were allowed to remain in the group. The mantra seemed to be, “as long as he didn’t do anything to me.” That type of thinking is comparable to saying, “as long as he doesn’t molest my kid.” A key to life is seeing things that can happen before they happen. Allowing bad behaviour to occur without resistance is setting a precedent. Allowing it to occur and hoping you don’t become a victim is the same as allowing your kid to be with a child molester and just hoping your kid won’t get molested.

Handicap Parker says he no longer parks in the spots for the disabled. I’ve met with him on many other occasions since and can make a case that his unethical and illegal parking was a red flag for other issues which I thought would be likely. He’s made a small fortune by owning Apple stock since 2007 and Tesla stock since 2018. This is kept in secrecy from his wife and kids. He could buy his daughter a used car but he’s content with having her take public transit to university 1.5 hours each way. They’ve never been on vacation as a family and family outings have been a rare event. He borders on being entry-level wealthy but forces his family to live in borderline poverty. I said to him, “if your kids ever find out how much money you have, they’re going to hate you.”

Funny enough though, it seems that he has more or less cut me off. It’s likely that he has grown tired of my opinions of him. People don’t like to be judged whether they are deserving of it or not. To that, I say, people should stop being losers then.

Recently, someone expressed their dismay with my rounds of cutting people off. I told her that I live by principles. The masses seem to live by what’s comfortable or deemed culturally acceptable. Perhaps, they also lack the ability to see red flags or are too scared to see them. In the case of Handicap Parker, I did this world some good by dissuading him from parking in handicap spots. Him tipping less than 10% at restaurants though may be too difficult to rectify.

What To Do

My interest in watching TV has waned over the years which is probably why I’m writing a post tonight. I suspect the enormous availability of easily accessible content may have dulled my dopamine receptors. Something is only desirable when there’s some difficulty in obtaining it. I would play chess but I have discovered that hours of chess too late into the night causes me difficulty falling asleep. Chess has been classified as a schedule 1 narcotic in my life after 8 PM along with caffeine and alcohol. Yesterday I played chess non-stop from 5 PM to 10 PM. I meant to quit at 9 PM but a junkie will do what a junkie will do. “It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.”

My childhood best friend’s dad, Craig, would spend most of his day in front of the television, smoking cigarettes while also reading a book. He didn’t have a job to go to as he was apparently collecting a military pension. As a kid you believe anything but I’m not sure if I believe it now. Also when I was a kid, another neighbourhood friend and I were standing outside when some jets flew across the sky. He said his dad was somewhere in the world also flying a jet. “Whoa!!” I said. The next morning when I saw my mother I told her about it, “Wing’s dad flies a jet!” She replied, “he’s does not. That’s just what his mother is telling him.”

There’s a refusal from me to accept that sitting in front of the TV for several hours a day is going to be the rest of my life even though every adult above the age of 40 I’ve ever known has done just that. The idea of being in my garage for hours learning how to build a pressure cooker bomb seems more enticing. Sometimes you hear how career-driven men fail in their marriages because of their dedication to working long hours. I suppose sitting at home every night to watch TV is too excruciating for them. Having someone to be bored with may or may not make the journey better.

Around a month ago at the strip mall I locked eyes with a guy that looked familiar but he looked too old and fat to be him. It dawned on me afterwards that it had been 10 years since I last saw him so it’s entirely possible he’s uglier and more obese now. Unlike him I wasn’t wearing a mask so he may have recognized me since I’m still a sexy son of bitch like I was 10 years ago. It’s also entirely possible he’s not aware of his age-enhanced physical unattractiveness causing him to believe I snobbed him out. I don’t care.

Cereal and Masturbation

I had a missed call over the weekend from someone looking to get lunch. When I phoned him back he had already eaten cereal. I said, “Oh well, at least you saved money.” If he could just discipline himself more often to eat cereal and jerk off then he wouldn’t spend so much money on eating out and hookers. When you’re hungry or horny, your monkey mind tells you to get the best you can get but what it doesn’t tell you is that it will settle for a lot less. The cost of a bowl of cereal and masturbation doesn’t even equate to an adequate daily donation amount to feed one of those starving kids in Africa.

Today for the first time I decided to put sugar in my milk. Much of what is sweet that people think tastes good is just something that tastes really bad but isn’t bad when sugar is added. Sugar tastes good, the other stuff with it is just the transfer tool for the sugar. While drinking the sweet milk it reminded me of the milk left over after the cereal had been eaten. Cereal as a breakfast meal was an easy sell to parents since it was extremely quick to prepare. Basically, kids were being fed dessert for breakfast.

I was staring at my Snoopy statue the other day and decided to try to quickly draw it. When I was in college I enrolled in a drawing class where the teacher did not know how to draw. Last time I checked they called that a scam except in a scam the drawing teacher would pretend to know how to draw. It’s amazing though that no one complained and just accepted it. I suck crap at drawing but always wished I could be good. As shitty as my quick sketch was I was actually surprised it wasn’t shittier.