Diary, 5/10 to 5/11/22: No Dr. Strange; Sony and Morbius; Richard Medhurst; too many syllables; photo memory? Recommended books; Hartmann; vertigo; macros; smoothie woo hoo!
Category: Memory
The Self, Neuroscience, and Wittgenstein
Diary 5/8 to 5/9/22: John Oliver; Noam Chomsky and Putin's propaganda; genocide; Assange; how to explain a lapse of memory: neuroscience vs nonsense for profit; Wittgenstein and James.
Swept Away: Diary 3/21 to 3/22/22
Books that sweep me away; inspired by Middlemarch; a scam avoided; inspired by Greta Thunberg; a dream; blog activity up; George Lakoff and metaphors.
The Philosophy Club: Diary, 11/8 to 11/14/21
"My new novel"; choosing to believe; my background; dreams; Saw franchise; nausea and gastritis; Cells; Marvel's Eternals; Herbert Read quote; critique group.
Getting Serious: Diary 10/26 to 10/31/21
Dreams; Chucky; memory failure; probation; Hemlock Club failure; impressed by two books; Herman Melville.
Author Befuddled: Diary 10/1 to 10/5/21
Sophie's World dissed; Collected Notes; new priorities; Tariq Ali; "best joke ever"; Saw franchise; baffled by Quine; "old man confusion"
Ballet and Dracula: Diary, 8/6 to 8/15/21
Blocked by Oliver; Stigmata DVD; Hemlock Club meetings; editing woes; did Ma want a girl instead of me? Reading Tod Browning's Dracula; a dozen movies dissed; book splurge.
Movie Binge: Diary 7/28 to 8/3/21
Faulty memory, a toothache, work on Kick Me, a dream, Lin Yutang quotes, depression, Twitter, and twelve movies reviewed briefly; not much else.
Novel Idea: Diary, 6/16 to 6/18/21
Movie reviews, Durant book, Thriftbooks complaint, sudoku books, my new schedule, Twitter popularity, Anatol Lieven interview, novel plotting.
Novelizing: Diary 6/13 to 6/14/21
Writing prompts; Cioran quote and words as blunt instruments; Sophie's World; failing memory again; two bad movies.
False Memories: Diary, 5/9/21
Irritated at being irritated; stimulating the memory of readers; the days of Nog; addicted to soft living; books on how to write; writing longhand & keeping going; thoughts of a new novel try; and synchronicity.
Hope vs Hate: Diary, 5/6 to 5/9/21
Old western movies; mindfulness; news hunger, terror, and hate; false memories and sense of self; horror movie remakes; Hemlock Club fizzle.
Diary, 1/16 to 1/22/2020
So, the Women’s March yesterday was a much bigger event than I had anticipated, given that my expectations were for a slightly larger Kavanaugh protest, the last (and first) such event I attended. It turned out that there were many vendors set up in this park on 21st Street. The hours from 10:00 to noon were devoted to speakers who were always wanting the crowd to chant or make noise, so that was pretty tiresome...
Diary, 11/20 to 12/1/19
A week of HBO and Cinemax and stuff. Watched maybe the first half of Aquaman, and turned it off at that point because it was so awful. The man himself is good, but the story just sucks. I expect it will have its fans among the younger set, like thirteen-year-old boys. But, seriously, drinking and driving? Heavy drinking for amusement value? No and No. The CGI is overblown; Atlantis would have looked better if...
Diary, 8/26 to 8/31/19
Lying in bed this morning, I recalled the names of two of the Pathfinder characters I played, so, a bit of reminiscence:
My first character was Fonk, a big green barbarian (half-orc). It took me a couple of minutes to come up with the name, which troubled me for a while. He eventually had a returning javelin that could carry a spell. This character involves several poor choices—a barbarian is more complicated to play...
Diary, 8/18 to 8/25/19
Well, I started a Pathfinder Meetup and acquired a group member within the first hour. I doubt that J or Pablo will be interested. If I can get just two enthusiastic members, well, that’s two potential friends. I’ve also discovered just a ton of stuff on the Internet, no surprise. I haven’t found any online play yet, but surely it’s out there. I’m not sure that I want that, because I’d then want home Internet…well, I wouldn’t necessarily fall into the same black hole that I discovered previously, i.e., something like “all Twitter, all the time.” But the real point of Pathfinder is, as always, new potential friends. I wonder ...
Diary, 8/11 to 8/17/19
Morita Therapy advises, “do what needs doing.” In my case, that would be housework. Is housework self-actualizing? Is housework flying high? Do I have any excuse for not doing housework? Yes, it’s called “housework be damned.” Housework is not my goal, it’s other people’s goal. It’s society’s goal for me. I say this even though I value accomplished ...
Diary, 8/5 to 8/10/19
Last night I started reading Mark Epstein, M.D.: Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective. I was unpersuaded by the author’s delving into “the wheel of life” for insights into human psychology; what I saw was obscure metaphor after obscure metaphor, nothing I could use or even understand. Buddhism offers a way to escape the otherwise endless cycle of reincarnation...
Diary, 7/15 to 7/23/19
I’m thinking that the reading I do, which I called “sifting” a while back, mostly doesn’t stick except in the form of externalized memory. That is, I highlight in books and/or type out quotes in my Collected Quotations book, but I don’t often review these products. So I sift out the gems, but don’t make much use of them. I need to make more use of them. Then I won’t be feeling like I’m just wasting time. In fact, the process, which grew by itself, seems efficient...
Diary, 6/15 to 6/18/19
I read some of Georges Bataille: Visions of Excess last night. As I expected, it’s quite weird, but much of it was also dull and obscure. I most enjoyed the selection “Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh.” It tells not only of the famous Van Gogh incident, but also of a man who chewed off his own index finger, persons who put out their own eyes, and of human and animal sacrifice generally. The stories...
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