Chapter 58

I woke up at 10, though I went to bed before midnight. I decided to just sleep naturally and get the sleep I needed, tomorrow I’ll put an alarm for 8 and ease me back up into my weekday schedule. I did a bit of reading in bed and listened to Eric Church’s album from the Top 500, some country-rock with lyrics mostly about drinking, the kind of music that makes me want to go on a road trip through the southern USA. Then it was Dire Straits, a band I didn’t know by name but instantly recognized the track Money For Nothing and its infectious guitar riff, the kind of song it’s impossible to never have heard. The second half of the album was a bit boring though, couldn’t get into it.

I did pull-ups in my home gym, then cooked a big-ass brunch of scrambled eggs, a sausage, a big quesadilla, a carrot, my homemade salsa and my homemade hot sauce, that I washed down with grape juice while watching an old wrestling match on YouTube. Kane and Mankind brutalized one another in a steel cage, The Undertaker and Steve Austin also intervened. Mick Foley took a lot of punishment, getting thrown on a concrete floor and repeatedly hit in the head with a steel chair. I thought my internet or the video was glitching because the image would freeze half a second before he’d get hit in the dome, but no, it’s the newer policies from WWE against unprotected head shots and now they censor it in their old footage. I listened to a few long-form interviews with Mick Foley, he is very articulate, quite a miracle he didn’t end up all punch drunk from all the brain damage he must have received.

I spent some time reading blogs about the Appalachian Trail, another bucket list item of mine, and entered the 25 CDs I received yesterday in an Excel spreadsheet. I put one in my PlayStation, but it’s connected to the bedroom TV and its crappy speakers so the lower sounds were a bit tinny, at times the bass drums sounded like banging on a yogurt lid. I listened to an album by Upon Ruins, an OK melodic death outfit, and wondered why it was so damn long, before I realized that the PS3 just loops albums by default. Then I put in Vargr’s EP, a doom/death side-project with guys from Obliveon and Gorguts, but the deficiencies in sound quality were too apparent. So I went back to playing music from my computer: a RABM-recommended “anarchist folk/Viking/black metal” band (yes, really) that wasn’t bad but reminded me why I dislike most folk metal, and then I plunged deep into a molasses pit of sludge and doom metal, with great albums from Black Sheep Wall, Iron Pike and Fange, that a friend shared on Facebook. He has exquisite tastes, and I am never disappointed with the music he brings to my attention.

In early 2017, I went on a three-week trip to India, focusing on the deep south. Today I uploaded pictures of the trip to my other blog, with a line of commentary for each one. It can be seen at: https://quesstuvascrisserla.com/2021/02/27/indeimages/

The whole process was frustrating, as Wordpress must have borrowed a page from CouchSurfing’s book and changed its perfectly functional editor interface to a clunky, buggy, crashing piece of shit. That’s the reason why this new diary is on Blogspot. I toyed with the idea of cutting ties with that wet turd called Wordpress and just moving my page elsewhere, but that would be quite a lot of work so for the time being I’ll just endure the crashes, error messages, and supremely retarded interface that uses “blocks” instead of just one big text window.

Anyway. It was nice to reminisce about that trip, India sure was a shock on the senses and I enjoyed it for the most part. There’s no sugar-coating how filthy and third-worldy it was though, and travelers I’d talk to would tell me how “I hadn’t seen nothing yet” and how worse it is in the north of the country. I’m a bit skeptical, to say the least, when people say that India would soon catch up with and even surpass China as an economic superpower.

I listened to a few political analysis videos. Apparently the American media is now using euphemisms (or, well, just accurately descriptive phrases) like “temporary detention centers for unaccompanied migrant minors” now that Senile Joe is in office, while they were talking about “children in cages” and even “concentration camps” when Trump was there. The whole thing is pure gaslighting, the way the two presidents are treated by the media is night and day.

Browsing the Political Compass Memes subreddit, which under the thick coat of absurdist internet humor is actually a pretty good place for political discussion between people from across the spectrum, I saw a discussion about how many people have a hard time reading or watching left-wing political analysis. I relate completely. I tend to gravitate to more centrist or right-wing or libertarian political content on YouTube, though I don't agree with all the opinions, as a social-democrat (I guess that’s the label I’m the closest to). Sometimes I tell myself I should check out more stuff from the left but I often end up rage-quitting in the face of their intransigence and fallacies and how antagonistic they are to whom they perceive to be their ideological opponents. And yeah, obligatory bUt tEh rIgHt wInGeRs tOo, to a much lesser extent I feel, though some of them became a bit insufferable themselves after Trump lost.

Kyle Kulinski is good, and I listen to him from time to time. The Amazing Atheist has mostly left-wing viewpoints though he's also quite anti-SJW (in fact wasn't he the very first to do anti-SJW videos?) and at times he's got some brilliant nuanced takes but his grating personality is hit or miss for many people. Aside from these two, I can’t say I know any worth watching, and couldn’t find any recommendations in the Reddit thread.

The girlfriend came back from work, we went to eat pizza, a 30-minute walk with the dog. She did her research, and had bad news about our plan to drive a vehicle to Europe: one branch of the Joyless Department Of Bureaucratic Commie Bullshit came up with a rule about driving a Chinese vehicle outside China, you need to get some kind of permit and put down an exorbitant bond to ensure the vehicle gets back to China. Now that’s odd, I heard of the opposite (countries that don’t allow overlanders to leave without the vehicle they came with, hence why that bureaucratic nightmare called the Carnet de passage exists). When we got back home, I browsed obscure corners of the internet where self-driving travelers congregate, and she was right. There’s talk about other options, like importing a vehicle from elsewhere on a temporary license and drive it out, but of course that comes with its own endless string of red tape, expenses and uncertainty. That’s a bummer, as this previously unknown retarded requirement complicates matters quite a bit. Fuck. We can’t have nice things. Of course we still have plenty of time, we’ll explore avenues as time goes by.

A bit more music before bed, positions 417 to 415 of the Top 500: Ornette Coleman’s free jazz, The Roots’ great Things Fall Apart (another one of the few albums I already know and like) and then an instrumental funk album by The Meters. I read a bit in bed, I’m near the end of the book about the Norman Conquest but it’s a pretty boring chapter I’m in now, about church reforms and other stuff that is much less of a page turner than the preparation and immediate aftermath of the Battle of Hastings.