Late Boomer's Den

  • I met my doppelganger and he was ugly!

    Teke::Teke – Doppleganger

    “There’s a German legend that when you see someone who looks exactly like you walking toward you, it means you’re going to die. Or you just met your identical twin you didn’t know about. Or both!”

    Robyn Hitchcock laid that bit about doppelgangers on us at a SXSW show sometime in the early 00’s. You never know what he’s going to say – he also compared his guitar to a javelina.

    The movies always play up the scary angle. What if your evil twin takes over? What if YOU’RE the clone? Dun dun dunnnnn.

    I met my doppelganger in college and I wasn’t scared. I was insulted – because he was fucking ugly! Met is too strong a word. I never talked to him because the idea of him being in my school made me mad.

    Professors who had him in their other classes called me by his name and I snapped back. “That’s not my name!” They were surprised, like “OK then…”

    I complained to my mother who was already in the habit of saying, “You were so cute. What happened?”

    It didn’t occur to me to ask if there was something she hadn’t told us, because he DID NOT look like me. She said “Maybe he thinks YOU’RE the ugly one.”

    Dammit. I hadn’t thought of that.

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  • VALIS and the fragmented self

    This time I read VALIS by listening to the free audiobook on YouTube – which totally counts. Found out there are quite a few books like that. Just started Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

    I always thought VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System) was a great book, full of heady ideas. I liked it the first time, though much of it was over my head. This time, having learned a little about Gnosticism and Phillip K. Dick’s life, I think I got it.

    I’m aware that VALIS was semi-autobiographical. I think it was Dick’s way of explaining how he navigated genius and mental instability. He might not have been the sanest writer out there, but he was functional – and creative.

    Horselover Fat wouldn’t give up his faith that VALIS had been real. Phil in the book knew Horselover was crazy, but that belief was keeping him alive. What changed was the amount of power he chose to give his alter ego.

    I know real life Dick had a religious experience that convinced him he’d lived another life as an early Gnostic Christian. I think he knew his experience was irrational. But I think he kept that part of himself around, because it was his creative engine.

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  • Hermit for a day: Alone time in the desert

    I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet. I just got back from a hike in the Franklin Mountains. Sometimes I forget I’m old.

    I love seeing the cholla cacti in bloom. Nothing can match that color.

    El Paso is down there somewhere.

    The trail turned out to be an avalanche that hasn’t quite finished avalanching. Big rocks and small boulders on the side of a slope that teetered and tumbled under my feet.

    I never get tired of prickly pear blossoms. They catch my eye every time.

    I was very surprised to see Indian paintbrushes in the Franklin Mountains of El Paso. I remember them as more of a coastal plains flower.

    I was trying to get to a spring only three miles away, but uphill miles are a lot longer regular miles. Finally I had to admit I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Those rocks were a recipe for a broken leg or at minimum a sprained ankle and I was alone.

    I might take another crack at it when I get a couple of those poles I’ve seen the spandex crowd use. I found a stick I could use as a cane and it made a huge difference.

    Worn out as I am, I needed this. the modern world is too noisy for me. Some days I have to go to the desert. the thorny shrubs and cacti remind me how resilient life is. I can feel the wind on my face and hear myself think.

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  • Your boss is on the Internet

    I think Internet’s troubles began when the boss got online. At first you knew your boss barely knew how to get online. Wasting the boss’s time was kind of an ongoing joke for years.

    In the mid-90s, only one computer at my newspaper was connected. That was the boss’s computer and he only used it when someone from the head office demanded.

    He hated the Internet, said it was a waste of time and he didn’t want to hear about it. You could get fired if you got caught using it. We had a newspaper to get out.

    When smartphones came along and it became apparent that we were having too much fun at the boss’s expense, the boss’s boss, or the boss’s boss’s boss, thought “Hmm. Those peons aren’t just employees wasting company time. They’re a piggy bank we haven’t cracked yet. Maybe we can make back some of the money we have to pay them?”

    Now every time I get online, I get a deluge of people trying to sell me something. Everything that used to be free, they’re telling me, “upgrade to premium! It’s just a few dollars a month!”

    Now the Internet is a money-making machine and we’re both the product and the customer… Maybe the Internet is the boss and the company store all rolled into one?

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  • On the transmutation of yard matter and cocoa

    Toadstools, berries, dead bugs and cicada shells. Those were some of the many ingredients. I stirred them into a bucket of water and left them next to the fence, as far as I could get from the house. Dad could be a spoil sport.

    I wasn’t sure what, but I knew something magical would happen eventually. I’d heard you could put a horse’s hair in water and it would turn into a worm, so I figured anything was possible.

    Unfortunately, I never got to find out. Just as my brew was reaching maturity, Dad smelled it from inside the house and said “God what’s that smell?” and tumped it over. I said, “Dad, no! My potion!”

    But Dad didn’t believe in magic.

    After losing several potions with a lot of potential, I gave up on magic and turned to science.

    I mixed household items like Windex, perfume and shampoo and put my “experiments” in the freezer. And in a few days, voila! They disappeared. I never saw it happen, but I was impressed.

    Sometimes I got into the medicine cabinet for more scientific looking items. I learned that dropping Dad’s Alka-Seltzer into a sink full of water would make them disappear.

    Then I turned to the kitchen. Baking supplies were a goldmine for science.

    My biggest discovery: You know how baker’s cocoa floats on top of the milk and refuses to sink? Green food coloring worked like a charm. Add a little sugar and you have green chocolate milk. Red, blue and yellow had no effect. So what if Mom and Dad wouldn’t buy more Hershey’s Quick . We had it covered.

    I admit I was unethical. Green chocolate milk looked like it might be poisonous, so I tested it on my little brother. When he liked it and didn’t die, it was Katie bar the door. Green chocolate milk was on the menu.

    Mom asked, “What on earth is happening to the green food coloring?” But I never gave up my secret.

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  • Alternate universe theory not proven – yet

    So my headphones were not in an alternate universe covered in lost socks.

    Turns out they were in my chair, covered by a lumbar support pillow. I was sitting on them the whole time.

    My wife saw them and reminded me I had blamed her, house guests, the dog and the mailman before settling on my alternate universe theory. OK OK, crow eaten. Tasted awful.

    But I’m not giving up that easy. I still believe there is an alternate universe that contains my lost car keys, wallets, earbuds and my brother’s missing parakeet.

    The real mystery is how I never wound up there before navigation software. I still remember the grouchy old lady I asked for directions once. “You’re on the wrong side of the county. Go back to town and start over!”

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  • Why we can’t change who we are

    Vlad Vexler on why it’s so difficult for someone to let go of an identity they’ve created for themselves even when it no longer makes sense – it feels like death.

    Why do people become so extreme and resistent to change? Why do they not say, “enough!” when their leaders and role models go rogue? In a word: identity.

    An identity is very hard to let go. I’ve been through that process more than once, and each time it was as if somebody died. Because they kind of did. Or more accurately, they melted into the rest of me.

    But it was traumatic and I grieved. Suddenly I didn’t know who I was anymore or who my friends were. Ultimately, those changes made me a better, more whole person, but it’s a scary prospect. Too scary for many.

    As we became more isolated in the real world, people began looking to the internet for a sense of identity and belonging. Social media algorithms naturally promote the most extreme positions, because they get the most engagement.

    If you’ve attached your sense of self to a group of people who become convinced to follow an extreme ideology, you’re likely to go along.

    I can go on an on about how the West seems to have lost its ability to think critically, but Vlad nails it so succinctly in the above video. In case you think I’m talking about the MAGA phenomenon, I am, sort of. But it’s not just about Trump. It’s about everyone.

    I’ve seen this dynamic affect the left wing as well. Witness the drama and infighting over the last few years among progressive YouTube creators. I respect a lot of them for their ideas, but I’ve learned not to let them or their communities decide who I am. That’s not up to them.

    I can’t let myself get pinned down by groups that become dogmatic or that violate my principles, because then I can’t grow. There were times in my life when I thought I reached my final form, but that always turned out to be an illusion. I’m 58 years old, but I have not stopped growing, and I don’t intend to.

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  • Toe meat, anyone?

    Never talk about your past injuries while cooking meat. I told my wife about the time I stubbed my toenail off while I was browning some ground turkey & suddenly the meat looked like the inside of my toe.

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  • Yet another great artist from Poland – Hania Rani

    Hania Rani – Ghosts. This one really hits the spot for me today.

    Don’t tell my wife, but I think I’m in love with this woman. I just discovered her via her live KEXP performance. She’s got something special. Classical yet modern.

    Her synth pieces remind me of Michele Jean Jarre, the only New Age composer I really like. Her piano pieces put me in mind of Erik Satie. She has a beautiful voice and her lyrics are compelling.

    Interesting to find that she’s from Poland. More evidence of a rich cultural life. So it’s back to that old Rabbit Hole I guess. It’s been a bit of a rough week, so this music was just what I needed today. Just put it on and chill…

    Hania Rani – Nest

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  • Zombie question

    R.E.M. – I Walked With a Zombie (Roky Erickson cover)

    If a pregnant woman becomes a zombie will the fetus claw it’s way out or just go along for the ride? Presumably it wants to eat brains also. I know it doesn’t work that way in The Last of Us, but I don’t know if that counts since they weren’t brain-ivores.

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