zx3 @zx3@driveinsaturday.org

i want a lot of things.

tonight, what i want most is to allow myself hope when i hear or think of this song.

https://youtu.be/IsgCvknW6ds

"no matter what we've been, we are the upshot now"

all is madness and the world is screaming. the air is the temperature of blood.

the cicadas are screaming like they know what's coming.

this is a point that my good friend Rezeya (over on awoo.space, which won't federate with us for some reason) has made several times and each time far more eloquently than i can, but it's where my head's at tonight, so here's my interpretation.

if i'm angry about anything--and i'm angry about a lot of things, and have been for some time--it's that the Opposition has robbed us of the ability to wield surrealism in an offensive manner. Dada is not currently an effective tool to protest war, oppression, poverty and hatred because *shit just keeps getting weirder* and it's impossible to keep up. the goalposts keep getting moved, and then the goalposts morph sideways into giant spindly giraffes and melting clocks.

notice that i'm not saying that the Opposition has "weaponized surrealism and turned it against us," because they're not fucking smart enough to do that, never have been, never will be. they use Dada with all the subtlety and grace of a chimp with a machete defending a pile of cocaine. there's no art there, just screaming and destruction. but at the moment it's just not effective for us to enter the ring by snorting a line and grabbing a bat with a nail through it. right now that monkey has a depressingly solid kill streak. yes, it's got to end sometime. yes, it will certainly break badly for our buddy the machete monkey. it *is* just a question of when. and yet, here we are, waiting.

anyway. just had a night of wondering about how exactly one is supposed to live in times like these, when we can see things are shifting fast everywhere. does it make sense to keep doing what we're doing? in ten years, what would we have asked our past selves to do without, and what to focus on instead? should we eschew pageantry and frivolous joys, or are those the pointless things that we're going to miss most of all?

is there a way to plan ahead in a post-surrealist world?

"Is there a time for keeping your distance?
A time to turn your eyes away?
Is there a time for keeping your head down
For getting on with your day?

"Here she comes...beauty plays the clown
Here she comes, surreal in her crown"

U2 (Passengers), "Miss Sarajevo"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVl2lluR_Tw

that which is considered "normal" is vanishingly temporary.

Pearl

https://youtu.be/gGYlocT1kOA

here we reach one of the really shit things about depression; i have a dozen things i could be doing but i don't feel the drive to do any of them, because the whole thing smacks of effort, man. so i'm in bed by 9PM.

plus i beat Breath of the Wild last night so i can't burn a couple of hours looking for those last 30-some-odd shrines.

at least i mostly cleaned off the desk hutch so that Phase Whatever of the new desk setup plan can continue, and i did a solid day's job search. let the Cavalcade Of Rejections begin!

this week is going to be...difficult.

ahhhh shit. here we go again.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StCharlesMO/comments/1500kup/the_library_is_under_attack_and_we_need_your_help/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=1

it's a lot easier to pretend that Everything Happening Now doesn't exist as a line on a diagram being plotted somewhere and that all the lines are converging and at the center of the diagram is a big sign that says "ESCHATON (AHHHH SHIT)" when you have booze and good music.

we have always been living in the End Times. we have never had a choice in the matter.