Let’s talk about the media I’m consuming right now.
Currently listening to Patrick Stewart’s autobiography Making it So, but I was listening to it on Spotify as I didn’t realize the Spotify has all these audiobooks, but also didn’t realize that you only get so many minutes. And the UI isn’t nearly as good as Audible’s– no, had to top myself from running on a tangent about Audible vs Spotify. Need to keep this about things that people can extract real value from.
There were a few parallels with my own life that I found interesting about Capt Picard like he became obsessed with storytelling as a way to escape his life and how he loved trains for some unexplainable reason and crap there were a couple other things that I found interesting. He had an abusive alcoholic of a father though. That is definitely not the case for me.
Right now since I ran out of minutes on Making it So, I’m listening to Let us Dream by Pope Francis, and that dude still really seems to get it. Like he sees the world just like I do. I’m a dedicated atheist and he’s the Pope but he’s still just spot on in my opinion about how the world needs to move forward and come together and how it’s on all of us and how God’s creation is not static, how we are all a living breathing part of God’s creation, building it along side God, as a part of him, not under him.
If I’m being honest with myself, this is kind of how I thought about Elon Musk like 8 or 9 years ago, hell even just a few years ago. Of course, I idolized Elon for his ideas about efficiency and running a company and how to build technology that really works for people, the things he said were so right in line with what I believe. And still are. But it was all about the technology and physical organizational concepts that I loved about Elon. First principles. However, once you get into interpersonal relationships, real human things, family dynamics, social structures, suddenly he turns into this monster in my mind. In some areas he really is a genius who has benefitted us in massive ways, and in other areas he’s this psychotic delusional monster who could be so awful as to drive us into some sort of real or metaphorical civil war. It’s okay to see both sides of a person.
So that was a tangent, just trying to say that I hope it doesn’t turn out that way with Pope Francis, and I suddenly see some other dark side of him I’m not aware of. I wonder what that side would be if it does exist.
Before this I listened to the Dave Grohl autobiography on Spotify, who, other than Tool may be the most influential musician to my life–well Weird Al of course haha–I still remember the first time I heard a Nirvana song that wasn’t Smells like Teen Spirit (which was always like my least favorite Nirvana song). I think it was Territorial Pissings, and my buddy in class had whispered and secretly gave me the headphones to his walkman and played that for me as this deep secret. The connection was like instantaneous for me. Too bad my other classmates threatened to beat the shit out of anyone caught listening to Nirvana because they liked only country music and were offended by the naked baby on the cover of Nevermind… which to be fair has always bothered me as well.
Good book. I didn’t like the trick he did in every chapter where he front-loaded the exciting part to give a preview. It works on people who aren’t thinking about the trick, but for me I just find it annoying and want to hear the whole story in order or as a train of thought, not as a calculated click-bait style technique repeated over and over.
But despite that complaint, it’s still a very good book. kept me listening. He’s very humble. Like, still doesn’t feel like he’s qualified to call himself a rock star.
But one comment he made, he was talking about a dream where he sees all these nuclear missiles shooting across the sky and realizes we fired nukes at someone and they are going to fire back and gave him like this hopeless sense that our whole lives are pointless because we’re just doomed to blow ourselves up anyway and how it connected with his daughter and her fears of war and anyway run-on sentence, he said something I disagreed with. It was something like “the blame for escalating war is solely on the heads of the war mongers in charge”. Wish I’d bookmarked it cuz I’m sure I didn’t get it quite right. But I really disagree here. War mongers in charge do not exist in a vacuum. They exist because there is a war-mongering population standing behind them. We are all responsible for expanding militaries, all of us who don’t speak out against war and military spending, very much including myself.
Pope Francis is such a breath of fresh air for me.
Before that I listened to Hack your body heal your mind on audible and that was pretty good. Basic physical advice which I can’t remember now. Maybe I should try taking notes sometimes? Haha
Before that I listened to Who Censored Roger Rabbit, an actual fiction book, which was the book that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was loosely based on. Pretty funny. Then I watched the movie, which I remember for a short while I was labeling as my most favorite movie, I think before I discovered UHF and Terminator 2.
Watchers by Dean Koontz cuz it was my friend’s favorite fiction book. So bad. It was so so bad, but like in a really entertaining way that made me want to keep going. Never got bored, it’s like watching The Room by Tommy Whazisname. Like that movie, it’s really bad from a technical perspective, but it still hits all of the important points that a story is supposed to hit. I’ve read 5 or 6 other Dean Koontz books and they’re all like that and I remember enjoying every one of them.
I’m nearing the end of Little House on the Prairie. Finished the 9th season and moving on to the few made for tv movies and I probably should have stopped at like the 6th season. It was a truly fantastic, insightful and meaningful show up until around season 5, then it slowly went downhill, like slowly and steadily down. Now it’s like, I’m just slogging through the movies cuz i feel committed. It’s taken me a year or two I think to work through the whole series.
Okay, I need to stop. This is a weird thing I decided to do, and suddenly I felt the need to get through this whole list (I just had a few video games to mention but I play very few video games actually and also the movie A Real Pain which was real good) but not sure why, it’s like it’s hard to convince myself to sit down and write, but then once I’m sitting here I feel this compulsion to just go and go and go and must talk about everything absolutely everything, every thought must be catalogued
oh yeah, speaking of video games I reset all my progress in Beach Buggy Racing 2 which I play on my Stealth Core trainer, which is one of the bestest exercise devices I have ever got. But it’s hard to motivate because I can’t find any good android games to play on it, so I’m going back to Beach Buggy 2.
I think my s key is–no I know what’s going on my keyboard battery is running down