Deunăzi1 I realized that March is almost over and I haven't written anything on this here Tar Pit of mine since February's latest intellectual wankery. After all, even the greatest wanker can only wank so much until he's spent; one's gotta spend time doing stuff before he comes back to write down on the stuff he's been doing, even if said stuff ain't much to talk about -- and after all, who's to say what's too much or too little to talk about on one's personal blog? Today I'll talk about Tarantino, tomorrow about pianos and the day after I'll talk about whatever else I feel about. Anyway, the question remains: what have I been doing?
Well, aside from the very important business of not dying2, I've spent the last two months... walking, for one. Yes, walking, one of the most basic and only in appearance dullest of humans activities, if only it weren't for the Aristotelian uncovering of its depths. Yes, walking, all the while talking and observing, slowly, step by step. Whether it took me somewhere or not, I can't really tell yet, all I can say is that I've walked daily, summing to just a bit over a hundred kilometers this month alone, all the while the trees blooming one day after another, as they've done so many Springs before, the birds uttering the same songs as last year and the year before it. The town is filled with people too, happily roaming around as if the terror never existed, as they moved on to the next reality TV show.
In the short intervals between walking, working, sleeping and eating, I've also been cooking now and then. I was never much of an expert at this and I don't plan on becoming one, but somehow, whenever I did it the food just came out right, in any case, a few orders of magnitude better than whatever junk they serve downtown nowadays. It occurs to me that cooking is to gastronomy what programming is to the field of computing, except the former gives a hell of a lot more leeway in terms of fault tolerance -- in other words, I very much suspect that Nature, in Her infinite wisdom, is more lenient towards interfaces that fail, even in the most stupid ways, than towards perfect shapes. In other words, after a certain tipping point, idealism is simply counterproductive, there's no such thing as an "ideal soup" or "ideal chicken", just like there is no such thing as an "ideal operating system", just the one that you're able and willing to digest.
I've also been playing for a bit here and there, hopefully I'll write more notes on this fabulous playing in the months to come.
And by the way, for what it's worth, I haven't abandoned my translation of Ghica. Going through paragraphs written in the Romanian language of the nineteenth century isn't exactly a piece of cake, nor did I expect it to be, nor will I make a haste of my attempt, it'll just be done when it's done. I'll have you know that my endeavour is far from useless, however, as it makes up just the gazillionth example of how people have barely changed with the passing of centuries, all the while repeating the same old slogans using different words, driven then, as now, by the very same superficial idealism3 -- speaking of bird-chatter on one hand, and ideals on the other.
Life could be much, much worse at this point, so in short, I'm just enjoying it as well as I can at this moment, with a look towards even more enjoyment, no thanks to the shittier and shittier times. Well, the times are what they are.
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Romanian contraction of the words "de", "ună" and "zi", i.e. some days ago, except I like the Romanian expression way more. What can you do now? ↩
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Ha-ha, good joke, right? Well, death's a tragedy for some, good news for others, but more importantly, death is also quite stupid, especially when you're young. So I don't have much to say about this except, try not dying, it's supposedly a very easy to achieve feat nowadays, what with all the progress; although somehow my experience stands as either evidence to the contrary, or as an exception that confirms the rule. It certainly stands as evidence of stupidity, that much I'll grant. Anyway, take from it what you will. ↩
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Back when I was (naïvely) interested in discussing politics with the internets, and with most of my public and private circles in general, I would have used the term "socialism" to refer to the same. Do you even know what the relationship between these two notions is, by the way?
See, back when I invested hours upon hours writing about the West's ideological confusions, y'all bitched about how I don't grasp the "nuances" of postmodern politics, how I "wrote too much", or about how I exaggerated regarding the proper usage of terms -- or worse yet, you turned your heads and muttered under your breaths something along the lines of "this Russophile dude and his annoying insults". Now that the conflict is boiling in your neighbour's house and the propaganda's gotten you mindless shits activated, y'all can't stop talking about "where to move", or worse, you just won't stop parroting the preposterous gargle that passes for geostrategic analysis on your tubes. Have you even stopped to wonder how your consensusing each other is anything but discussion?
So no, I am not interested in "discussing" any politics with you TV-watchers, not only because, unlike you, I know what I don't know, but worse, because any attempt would be indistinguishable from an interaction with a fucking chatbot. And at this point thanks, but I'd rather talk to a chatbot than entertain your nonsense. ↩