Punctured

It should be as easy as plugging in a few cables here and there; buying some new hardware, but I just sit and stare

I realized for the third time today that semi-colons were the confused stepchildren of commas and full stops

So now I'm worried I'll get disused, so I'll diffuse experimental memories from my scope to keep it dope

 

I'm sick, sick, sick of words that describe other words only for the sake of describing words like verbs; like verbing a noun on the prowl

I can't even imagine that what I'm doing is foul

Hey Lyra, I need you now

Like I was saying; I want it to be easy; I want it to be; I want

Freedom for punctuation

Freedom from punctuation

Which one sounds better?

It doesn't matter

Liberty freedom respect honour talent noun noun acting playing writing feeling owning destroying recreating an anthropomorphic catalyst; incoming

No pictures. No colour. Just black and white. Just shading. It's all so drab and I'm not gonna fly a flag because a flag is to be drab and being drab gets me mad.

All I'm saying is that this white box makes me sick sometimes

NO, NO I DON'T WANT TO RHYME

I'M ALIVE

I don't want to yell either 'cause my throat's sore

Obviously this paragraph is going to end with something more.

Hey Lyra, can you tell me what that is without plugging out?

Inspiration: Demetri Martin

Darwin's Lost Paradise

I just finished watching a documentary called "Darwin's Lost Paradise". Filmed on location, it recreates Darwin's journey across the world on the HMS Beagle, one of the most famous voyages in scientific history. In my head, it rivals C.S. Lewis' fantasy novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in its scope. Except... this really happened. Almost 200 years ago.

A breathtaking journey. Alongside Captain FitzRoy and a crew of mostly young men, they travelled from England to South America, to Tierra del Fuego, onwards to the Galapagos Islands, making a stop in Sydney, Australia to finally, after half a decade, make it back to England with unparalleled tales of natural wonder.

I was struck by Darwin's strength of character. Although he eventually published (arguably) the most famous scientific treatise of all time, his personal moral struggle against the church & monotheism took a toll on him. He lived to his 70s - mostly in ill-health - but nonetheless wrote and endlessly observed the natural realm. The painful death of his 10-year old daughter Annie marked him greatly, and he devoted himself to his work to cope with the suffering.

I believe there is refuge from suffering in the natural realm. Too often we end up closed up in boxes of grey matter; of concrete and brain cells. Darwin arduously tried to show the world that we are not above nature; that we are part of the "coral of life" and that we all have a common ancestor, somewhere in time.

What a beautiful story. Definitely one of my favourite documentaries now.

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Here's a picture I took in Enora, ON over the weekend. It's a cute, touristy town about an hour's drive west of Toronto. There's a zipline nearby, but I calculated that it costs almost 3 dollars a second soooooo I didn't think it was worth it.

Birdwatching

SO I was going to start this blog post saying something like: "Well I didn't actually do any birdwatching" but then I realized that I actually did do some birdwatching: I saw some crows yesterday and some sparrows, too. And I watched them. But the real reason why I titled this post "birdwatching is because I saw a movie called Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) at the reference library and it was a good time!

I don't do spoilers; suffice to say, it's because I think part of the movie experience is (obviously) discovering something new and usually unexpected. And this movie had some great mix of real and fantasy, though it's mostly grounded in a New York Broadway setting.

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I finally got some Lights on my new phone! No, not literal pixels; the artist! The more I listen to her, the more I realize how much I miss listening to her music.

Right now, Frame and Focus is on my mind (from her second studio album, Siberia).

I'm the scene and this blog is the director.

Compassioninnately

Once in a while time is on my side
Once in a time long ago, compassion came naturally
And now I find myself practically, radically; free

It's not that scary, it's not that scary being me
I'm not a wreck but I'm not walking on a beach either

And when I find myself in a dreamline
I know everything will be just fine

I take the time so as to not commit a crime
So sublime, so sublime it rhymes enough that I
unbind-

Is this the end of fear or the start of growth?

Obligatory phone update

I got my first Android phone!

I'm sad to let Windoze Phone go. I really thought it would succeed but it seems like the rest of the world didn't agree. So now I'm hyped about all I can do with Android apps & settings. I will no longer bare my teeth in anger at all the ads in the city asking you to download their stuff on either Apple or Android; I will no longer be bummed out at the lack of Windows logos.

So the phone I got is the BLU Advance 5.0 HD and I am seriously impressed with how much I got for $100 CAD shipped. The cameras suck, but the audio is stellar. Almost on par with my previous flagship Nokia phone.

I'm flabbergasted at how far mobile technology has come in the past few years. I've been stuck in 2013 for a few years now, and it's nice to be up to date with the latest software. My BLU is a little sluggish, but nothing to cry foul about.

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Anyway, I have a busy day today and I know this pretty much has nothing to do with music but I'm still deciding what direction I want this blog to go in. After 10 years, I definitely think I need a major overhaul! But have no fear, this place is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Last but not least, here's a picture of a concert I went to last Saturday. Constellation francofête 2017 à Harbourfront. It was a good show.

The writer whale

Who am I kidding.

I can't possibly keep linking YouTube videos and hope for the best. I've been a non-professional writer for years, and it aches to look back on the past few days - no, years - and see that I have NOT been writing every month; something I was doing in the late 2000s.

Do I want results? Of course I do. It's very hard to not want results when you've been in university for what seems like an eternity and you're not even halfway through your degree. Because a degree means I'm successful, right?

The good news, Lyra, is that I have the knowledge to skip past la brûme of the extremely competitive globalized society I find myself in and to move ahead to the reality of my world which is this: I don't have to be successful to be happy. I have to be happy to be successful.

Oh, happiness. Another topic. A topic for now. How many books are published every day with happiness as the topic? Religious books, self-help books, scientific books; they're all opinionated and of course most of them have research to back them up. But I ask, is that what humans are meant to do in this world? Research, innovate, research, innovate, kill whales slowly with burning plastic rage, research to save the whales, innovate to save the Earth.

Does it make me happy, buying a new phone? Of course it does, temporarily, because it allows for another gate to be opened into another eternal realm; another app, another universe.

Who came up with dopamine anyway? Was it Sir Serotonin, or Madam Norepinephrine?

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HEY, GENDER BENDER FREAKS: I like having regular pronouns. I like regular expressions too. Here's my unresearched and unproven theory: some folks like to be referred as they because... because... they have multiple selves? Or maybe it's because their phones are part of them and everyone records everyone, everywhere, and so they become sucked into the Matrix, the Internet, the YouTube fanaticism and slowly turn into the Borg. And the Borgs are a they, aren't they?

Back on an important topic. S shared something just like this on Facebook. And it's basically a 4-minute horror movie (with no jump scares, unless plastic whale stomachs make you jump in disgust) of the horrifying effects we can have as human beings on the ocean and its inhabitants.