Blue Saturday

i haven't seen the movie field of dreams but i gather the idea is that the guy is inspired to build a baseball diamond so that ghosts of old legends will come and play in it, possibly? anyway, the reason i was thinking about it was that it seems like a nice albeit hollywood example of a purely unproductive pursuit, as a counterbalance to the mundanely relentless insistence on productivity in workaday life. like to have a project to dedicate yourself to, but in particular one that is as ludicrously nonsensical or just pointless as you can stand, i feel like that would be hugely therapeutic.

yeah i've sometimes pondered making a vast coherent metaphysical system just for the sake of never telling anybody about it

Here's a tiny idea: let's make dumbifying pop culture. Here's a big idea: let's rebuild enterprise, commerce, and democracy. See the pt?

i see the pt, let's make dumbiying pop culture except it's not a commodity

Just ftr field of dreams turns out to be a paean to the special little flower entrepreneur who ignores all sensible advice to go ahead with a nonsense projec, in the end a shitload of ppl turn up from nowhere for no reason to give him bundles of cash. Horatio Alger myth but subtly tailored to be even less practical

i get yr point but i worry about this lol special little flowers lately, seems like the alternative is "stfu drone and get back to yr treadmill"

like "sorry i'm not pulling my weight on Pirate Galley Earth, i will brush up my can-do attitude and get right back to it"

more flowers less vegetables i dunno

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_A_User's_Manual

Between World War I and II, a tremendously wealthy Englishman, Bartlebooth (whose name combines two literary characters, Herman Melville's Bartleby and Valery Larbaud's Barnabooth), devises a plan that will both occupy the remainder of his life and spend his entire fortune [...] Ultimately, there would be nothing to show for 50 years of work: the project would leave absolutely no mark on the world.

i've been meaning to read that for years but didn't really know that's what the plot was?

anyway let me tell you about special magic baseball pitch building guy and his hard-working neighbours. they all died.

I remember hearing a paper about someone in an asylum, maybe early 20th century, who would use her shit and other rubbish she could find to make these massive complicated machines that did nothing but operate within themselves. Let's see you film that, Costner.

Bartlebooths thousands

Can't remember if I've just massively spoilered it or things become clear early on. Either way 'plot' is a bit misleading iirc, it's a rich non linear tapestry of themes & characters. Man.

Just fucking reading can be ludicrously time consuming and entirely unproductive tbh.

ah right the paper I was half-remembering was on Heinrich Anton Müller

http://www.indexpage.nl/pics/heinrich_anton_muller_big.jpg

xp

yeah i like that about it, have to wrestle with my inner protestant schoolkid that keeps wanting to learn tho

sometimes i think architecture might be the only decent human cultural product but then i think how much of it is rank

Good punditry is the pinnacle

this thread rewritten via Giles and Dunphy wd be a thing

This thread, any thread, great philosophical tracts, surely there's one for a trio/quartet

i am sad to have had my notions about field of dreams ruinously dispelled. i don't even want to know about rosemary's baby, i am gonna continue to believe it talks and hangs out with john travolta.

i came to a realization recently of the somewhat obvious fact that everyone in modern society exists thanks to the usurpation of someone/something else's power -- but instead of the usual feelings of guilt, not wanting to step on grass lest i bend a blade, etc. i have instead used this fact as an opportunity to be thankful. like thanks for allowing me to exist, thanks for this gift. i think i understand karma now.

did i really write that only yesterday? fucking hell.

estrus can bronze sheep's liver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i84-4-GtcpM

went to York for a conference yesterday, and when i woke up and got off the train all bleary-eyed and stepped out into the early morning sunshine i had this teary fit, cos of sunshine and beautiful architecture and history and this awesome sense of being free to go anywhere and doing anything but knowing that i didn't have that freedom cos i'd fucked it away a long time ago plus responsibility outweighs freedom plus the real world says "hi shut up do mundane shit forever - maybe i'll let you have the occasional touristy break if you behave real well - or die in a shitty backstreet somewhere clutching a bottle of cheap cider"

then i settled down

then on the train home some pissed up old dude plonked himself into the seat next to me and gradually falls all over me snoring and moaning to himself, head drifting into my lap, and at one point he gets hold of my thigh and gives it a squeeze and starts sliding his hand up crotchwise with intent so i lift his hand back down towards my knee and tell him "easy tiger" even if i can't tell if he's asleep or just trying it on or tbh just trying to freak me into moving seats so he can have the double to himself, but there's that stink of beer you've drunk coming off him, peculiar smell you only get after you've drunk the stuff, and i don't bear him any malice even if he is cramping my book-holding arm, and tbh i want a drink myself pretty badly by this point

but the train gets back to Hull and i wake him up and he moves and i get the bus home and behave myself and sit around in the damaged timbers of my life and think about plans to cast off for freedom and no deep down they're probably hopeless, and then get a little teary again and lonely, and then think well at least you have stories and tomorrow morning the birds will be singing again and when i woke up the birds were singing again

:)

That's publishable

i published it here :)

beautiful tbh

yeah, that's the word

you're all far too effing kind. i like to try and map out those oblique bits of life, the nonsensical, the loser moments, into words. cos maybe the ephemera is the thing we all have most in common. or maybe it makes some sense laid out flat, stuffed and labelled so the next visitor can wonder what kind of misguided civilization came up with them.

ah bollocks if we don't tell each other stories how can we ever know we're in the same tribe?

I admire your willingness to share. I silently make various poignant observations, but as a general rule I'm not willing/able to share them with anyone. You're generous! It's nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pldwyvFseFU

i am what they call in the trade reinstated :\

2 days into my bender and contemplating a 3rd - which i don't feel physically capable of, yet, so we'll see

and for what? idiot logic. lonely lonely lonely = set sail on the sea of pubs looking for company, that's gonna run in the other direction as you stagger and drool pissed into view. but that hopeless hope fucks with me.

this is the mechanics of how an addiction cons you.

:(

tbh there's few things in (my) life better than feeling sozzled and sorry and listening to maudlin tunes, it's the lack of longterm viability that's the big ish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mFF3VmVAs

dude i can't think of anything positive or supportive to say that isn't despicably banal but all the same you should know that there are folks here that care about you to whatever extent this limited interface allows, and for whatever that might be worth

thanks dude. at least i'm having the good sense to stay in today. nothing for it but to shrug and climb back on the wagon, really.

or back in bed. on the third day he rested, after all. and television really is a remarkable thing. spiralli otm.

Do what you can, hit us up and we'll do what we can

Thinking of you, J. <3

Wolves manager Dean Saunders, following his side's relegation to League One: "Our fans have had three years of pain. I'll be delighted to try and change it for them.

worst effort at rehab ever

Hey

Oh, I'm sorry NV. Hang in there, we are thinking of you. That sounds so dumb but I don't know what else to say other than what's already been said much more eloquently by others before me.

Ive had close experience of much worse fwiw

i'd beat myself up about it but that seems to make the panic attacks worse :/

torn between feeling really fucking stupid and reassuring myself i'm probably not having a heart attack

As someone who has had multiple panic attacks weekly over the course of the last two months and nearly took myself to the emergency room a handful of times I can tell you that you are probably not having a heart attack but God I'm sorry you're experiencing a PA right now. Scariest feeling. :/

i get them every time i'm hungover E so i know what it is and this was yet another reason to stop doing this to myself