The ramblings of an itinerant nobody. Philosophy, Buddhism, Travel.
Fleeting moments of bliss. The half-hour after my morning coffee, sweet silence punctuated by hungry meows or a distant lawnmower. The satisfaction of lust; tangled in blankets staring at the moonbeams sneaking in through half-closed blinds. The subtle hum of a lazy ceiling fan cooling the sweat from our skin. This bliss is also misery, for it is perpetually ending, replaced in turn by myriad…
I used to have ~400 books. When it came time to move back from the UK, I donated them all to a local school library. It’s surprisingly expensive to lug so many books from country to country. Sometimes I regret it, but then I realize it’s better not to have too much stuff slowing me down. Now that I’ve been back for a little while, I find myself accumulating more and more. I go through phases where…
Suppose there is a person who goes to the house of a close friend. The friend is rich and sets out many rare delicacies. He takes a priceless jewel and sews it inside his friend's garment, gives it to him and then departs, while the man lies asleep, knowing nothing of it. When the man gets up, he wanders off to other lands, seeking food and clothing to keep himself alive, undergoing great hardship…
The A E S T H E T I C A meme? An art style? Strange music for sad Millennials? All of the above and more. Never before have I been so enamored with... whatever this is. I stumbled upon it years ago and it struck a chord so deep, so foundational to my very being, that I’ve been obsessed ever since. Vaporwave is an Internet music microgenre, aesthetic and meme that emerged in the early 2010s.…
My dear friend Doña Juanita has been unfairly demonized for far too long. Blame the feds, the church, and the alcohol lobby. I enjoy my nightly indulgence. The world is quiet and I can finally relax. I like to sit on the back patio with my wife and gaze at the stars, giggle at stupid jokes, and ruin the day’s macros with assorted snacks. Then we’ll watch a movie or doom-scroll on the big screen…
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell I was a self-destructive youth, driven in large part by a naive belief that I was practically invincible. Motorcycles, women, substances. I read nihilistic philosophy and idolized people like Jim Morrison. I wanted to experience everything to the fullest, rules and taboos be damned. The idea of being…
The good old days Piracy isn’t stealing. I’ve been seeing this a lot lately, mostly in response to the rising consumer frustration with digital rights management (DRM) and the proliferation of sketchy subscription models. It raises some interesting moral questions about the nature of ownership. I never read the EULA, but from what I’ve gathered, when we purchase digital media we are receiving a…
Every time I leave the US, I’m always struck by how happy other people seem to be. I’ve been to six continents, dozens of countries. Nowhere else have I experienced such deeply internalized bitterness, entitlement, and misanthropy as I do back home. There’s something wrong here. We’re not well. I’m recently back from Baja California Sur. The Mexican people never cease to amaze me. They’re some of…
This is more like it. The Cactus Rental guy showed up in a similar car and handed me the keys. He stayed behind with a battery charger to sort out the other one. We tossed our bags in the trunk and headed south. I love the landscapes down here. Long stretches of desert highway, scrubby mountains crashing into the Pacific. The stark contrast of a white-washed compound housing a Mexican Marine…
It was a beautiful drive from San Jose del Cabo to Todos Santos. We stopped at Agricole for some road snacks and their Insta-famous Fresas con crema . Problems started as soon as we checked into the hotel. Swarms of bugs, broken A/C, major construction on the alleged 5-star property. I’m a pretty laid-back traveler, but this was too much. By the time everything came to a head it was nearly…