Category: Uncategorized

Have you ever noticed that a phone call being made through a car’s system is way louder and more imposing than when it’s playing music? The other day I was walking down a quiet street when I heard a booming, omnipresent voice. I looked all around me, but couldn’t locate the voice. Then I realized it was coming from a gray 2018 Dodge Durango. “And so what did she say?” the Durango asked. I approached the front of the vehicle. “Who?” I asked. No response. “Hello?” I said. “Well to be fair, I think she’s going to want to take a couple days to think it over,” the Durango said from the hood of the car. I opened the hood and asked the engine, “Who? Think about what?” Suddenly the door opened, and a man jumped out and started yelling at me. I waved him off and walked away.

I mean seriously, why can you hear everything from a car phone call? It’s like the call is coming from the atmosphere itself. Earlier today I was walking through the neighborhood and started hearing a phone dialing out coming from what seemed like the clouds. “God butt-dialing me again?” I thought. I’m so funny. Then I hear a muffled but bass-heavy “HEYYY” emanating out of the panels of a maroon Honda Civic. Imagine if people could call into a commercial airplane and everyone on the flight had to listen to the pilot’s phone call over the speakers the entire time. Or you start dozing off and get jolted awake by an omnipresent dial tone sound coming from the sky. Meanwhile the head of a flock of geese is going, “Did anyone hear that?”

What will putting a call on speaker be like when we have chips in our heads that replace our phones? You see a woman walking through the grocery store go, “Hold on, let me put you on speaker,” as she taps her temple. Her mouth isn’t moving, but a voice starts coming out of her ears and nostrils. Xfinity: Now subdermal! Let your loved ones speak through you like you’ve always wanted. What if you put incoming calls on vibrate? You fall asleep on the couch for a few minutes, then start violently buzzing and vibrating, falling off the couch as collections calls for your unpaid $16 parking ticket. I put my house phone on vibrate once growing up and caused a mudslide.

The other day was Alexander Graham Bell day. Apparently after he died, his wife commented that, “Mr. Bell did like to say in fun, “Why did I ever invent the Telephone?” I think of this in instances like at Chili’s the other night when the waiter came to our table and asked “What can I get started to drink for you?” and my overly-forward friend said, “Your number.”

I do like phones though. I miss house phones. I like rotary phones. At one point during my teenage years I took my grandmother’s old rotary phone and connected it in my room. Early the next morning I woke up to an electrifying BRRRRRIIIIINGG that I felt in my bones, and when I tell you I SPRANG out of bed like a jack-in-the-box –

I love phone calls – one of my favorite things to do on a free evening. I’m a pacer, I don’t know about you. I just walk in circles around my apartment for hours when I’m on the phone. I love when a call gets disconnected and every time, both people go, “Huh, that was weird,” or “What happened? Well, anyway…”

Not being able to see who you’re talking to adds a layer of confusion and comedy to the interaction. Earlier I was on the phone with my dad, I said something that warranted some kind of response. I don’t hear anything for 3 or 4 seconds, I furrow my brows and try listening closer somehow, then I just hear him wheezing and coughing, then he doesn’t say anything and starts saying something else. He also always sounds like he’s far off in the distance because of the poor service in his area.

Anyway, I have to cut this short to get on the phone. Lots more to say. Call me if you want to talk about it.

I had a peculiar experience at a restaurant the other night. I was sitting there sipping a glass of rosé, when the waiter came over to take my order. I looked at a tasty-looking entrée the table next to me had. “Ohh, is that the roasted chicken? I’ll have that,” I said. The waiter took it from their table and put it on mine.

I didn’t exactly set the right tone with this waiter. When I walked into the restaurant, he asked if I had a reservation, and without stopping, I said, “I don’t believe in this abstract concept you call a reservation,” and sat at an empty table. I knocked on the wooden table twice and beckoned for a strawberry daiquiri.

When I finished the other table’s half-eaten chicken, the waiter came to collect my empty plate. “I hope you enjoyed your meal – our chef poured her blood, sweat, and tears into this recipe,” he said. I promptly left, the restaurant has been shut down, and the chef is being charged with attempted murder by poisoning.

Up to a certain level of local or fine dining, all restaurants have the same rotating variety of frozen foods that come from either Sysco or US Foods, and it’s a competition of who can heat it up and throw it on a plate the best.

I was a short order cook for about five years at a local country store, cooking things from pancakes to burgers to submarine sandwiches. Whenever I made a Reuben sandwich, I would make a smiley face 🙂 with the Russian dressing on each slice of bread. Lots more to speak about from that whole gig.

I’ve always been amazed when a host or hostess says how long the wait will be. You show up at 6pm on a Friday night. “It’ll be about 45 minutes,” they say. How do they know? Is divine knowledge being channeled into their brains from a higher power? What if everyone in the restaurant decided not to leave? What if they all decided to have a spontaneous sit-in? I can’t tell you how many sit-ins have ruined a night out for me. I actually organized a sit-in during my college days. I showed up to a restaurant with 40 people ready to sit in protest. The host said “You need a reservation,” so we turned around and left, then went and hung out at a park for the rest of the day.

Imagine if restaurants had salespeople that cold called you. It’s 9pm, you’re sitting on the couch watching Hulu in your sweatpants. Your phone starts vibrating. All it says is, ‘Applebee’s.’ You take a chance and pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Jacob?”
“Yes?”
“Hi, this is Greg from Applebee’s in Lakewood, how are you?”
“Fine, how are you?
“Good, good…hey, you hungry?”
“Not really, why?”
“Well, listen – it’s the hour of half-off apps. Every night starting at 9pm. You like mozzarella sticks?”
“Yeah, actually. You guys have good mozz sticks.”
“Why thank you, we take a lot of pride in our mozzarella sticks.”
Clacking sounds go off in the background.
“Are you typing?”
“My apologies, yes, just taking notes for future calls.”
“Okay, well, I’m not that hungry, and I really don’t feel like driving to Lakewood.”
“What if I told you about our all-new Irresist-A-Bowls®? From zesty and tangy to bold and fresh, Irresist-A-Bowls® bring the flavor. Crafted with chipotle lime chicken or shrimp, crisp greens, fresh ingredients, over a bed of cilantro rice, our bowls are simply irresistible.”
“Now it sounds like you’re just reading from a script.”
“Look, we’ve got a plate of Classic Broccoli Chicken Alfredo sitting here with your name on it. It’s a bed of fettuccine that’s absolutely drenched in alfredo sauce, and it’s served with our soft, warm breadsticks that are just sopping wet with buttery garlic sauce.”
“Goodbye.”
The phone vibrates again. You look down and see a Facetime call from Arby’s.

The only thing that sucks about tortilla chips at a party is not being able to hear anything while you’re eating them. The worst is when there’s a group of people all munching on tortilla chips trying to have a conversation and they’re all just nodding as if they understand what the other people have said, and you think you’ve all bonded, but in fact the bonds of potential friendship have been quashed by Tostito’s Hint of Lime® tortilla chips.

Really, though, the tortilla chips are a saving grace for me. If I’m in a group of more than 4 or 5 people, I can’t concentrate on anything being said. If there’s a bowl of tortilla chips available, at least I can be in my own little world of crunch that drowns out all the stimulus. I’ve never been a viber. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do in a large group besides stand there and watch. If something funny happens, it doesn’t land, because the cacophony of noise and lights is so overwhelming. I don’t know what to say, but I feel like I have to contribute noise to the whirpool of sound happening. If someone took my voice from a party and isolated it, it would be a series of not-even-loud “eeeeyyyys,” “ahhhhhs,” and “ohhhhhhs.” People would think I’m practicing my vowels. They do need practice, as I tend to garble my words.

I have trouble concentrating in most conversations. More often than I’d like to admit, a conversation from several hours prior will pop into my head, and a response my interlocutor gave will finally fully land in my mind, and I’ll realize the full significance of what they said. I’ll feel guilty and think, “That was a really interesting thing they told me, and all I said was ‘oh wow.’” I make a mental note to follow up. It’s a work in progress.

I wouldn’t be the first to point out that we constantly feel the need to make noise, everywhere all the time. Often I’d like to sit in silence with others. A perfect day with a loved one to me is taking Sudafed and sitting cross legged facing one another and staring in each other’s eyes until we feel compelled to speak. Just kidding about the Sudafed.

Of course, some of this is anxiety-driven. How can one not have anxiety talking to someone else? Stepping outside your door is terrifying. I exaggerate, of course. At a big soiree mixer in Montpellier in August 2023 I was chatting with Caroline from England for a while. Throughout the conversation, I kept thinking, “Just be normal. Keep your head above the water.” I thought it wasn’t going too well. When she went to get another glass of wine, I was left standing there with her American friend. We asked each other a few questions. I’ve never felt such contradictory vibes, every branch of conversation screeching off the road straight into a ditch. It was like those videos of crash test dummies driving a car into a brick wall at 60mph and watching the car crumple into itself. After a minute, another man walks up and starts a conversation. This guy made me look like James Bond – he turned the dynamic from a crash dummy test to a full-on fatal 40-car pileup on the highway – not that I’m judging! I walked away without saying anything, then Irish goodbye’d from the whole mixer. A classmate told me the next day that Caroline was asking about me. The density of my head is a marvel.

I did try to astrally communicate with some of you in recent months. I’m assuming you didn’t get anything, or you would’ve said something. 

I went to the doctor’s last week and said, “Doc, I never have anything to say and I haven’t had an original thought in years.” He gave me Omeprazole. I think it’s a fact that my brain doesn’t have the best chemical makeup.

I do think it’s tragically funny that we’re stuck just verbally describing our sensations to doctors in the hopes that they get it, which they rarely do. We say, “I have this weird pain – well, not pain, more like a pressure, right about here.”

They start poking and prodding you, first hitting your knees with hammers.

“Well, I guess behind here. I guess it’s a little painful. It’s like a tingling.”

They start firmly tapping different parts of your body with their pointer and middle finger like an aggressive goose.

“Maybe it’s closer to this area, actually. Ow, yeah, actually, that hurts a lot. Kind of a sharp pain.”

The prescription paper comes out and they guess which pill will make the pain go away.

Same with therapy – months and years of trying to describe what you’re feeling. 

I’ve always thought it would be great if you could have someone else inhabit your body for two minutes, just to gauge how your body and brain feels to live with. We have no true sense of what “normal” is supposed to feel like. What if a trusted friend inhabited your body for 30 seconds and went “JESUS this is terrible, how are you walking around right now?” Or if you could walk into the doctor’s, have them go into your body, feel how it feels, and then immediately point you in the right direction or give you the exact remedy you need. Or maybe more positively, they could say, “Wow, I wish I had this clarity and lightness of being.”

I think this is possible under the right circumstances. Obviously we’re all enmeshed in the same vibrational field/web, so obviously there’s a way to reconnect our vibrational cords. Right??

I could go on. This all being said, I love talking with people – I may just need a pocketful of tortilla chips to go into crunchtime when the going gets rough !

It snowed for most of the day today. It was only supposed to snow for a few hours. That was the declaration made yesterday. This happened last weekend, as well: a few hours of snow projected, which became several hours of snow. I would look out the window every hour to see snow still falling, simultaneously opening the weather app on my phone, which confirmed that it is indeed snowing. I took comfort in this digital affirmation of my physical experience.

Meteorology is often perceived as the most worthless science/profession by the majority of people, with meteorologists as its corrupt preachers. “These guys never know what the hell they’re talking about,” I hear time and again. There is an undertone of “who’s going to stand up to these crooks and put an end to this charade?” I think if it was truly that useless, an exposé would’ve come out already, in the same vein as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Nevertheless, a not-insignificant part of me is tempted to become a meteorologist to get behind the scenes and get to the bottom of the industry. Paranoia abounds within the American psyche. Walking down the street in Capitol Hill one day during 2020, the height of all sorts of events, I brushed by a man who was staring up at some telephone wires. “They’re up to something with these poles,” he said. “Oh, I know,” I replied, without stopping.

I like the snow. I wish we got more of it. I have fond memories of sledding and tubing in New York, when we’d get several feet of snow that would stick around for months. One time, on our way to a big tubing hill, my mom driving my step brother and my 13-year-old self down the interstate, a very large sheet of ice flew off the top of the trailer of a semi. It flipped and flew dozens of feet high into the air. I watched it the whole time, ascending, and then descending towards our car. If you recall the scene from LOTR RotK where a catapult from Minas Tirith launches a chunk of the castle hundreds of feet into the air towards Gothmog, the orc captain, it was just like that. SMACK right into my mom’s windshield, smashing the whole thing, but not breaking through. We ended up not going tubing that day.

I love shoveling snow. I love the community camaraderie that comes after a large snow storm, everyone trudging around slowly, shoveling sidewalks, the snow muting the white noise of the neighborhood with its vast soft blanket. Back in NY my mom hired a friend to plow her driveway. When he came, I would come outside and shovel. I chose this timing in the hopes that he would ask me to “weigh down” his plow by leaning my body on the front of it, after which he would push me around with the plow. This was a blast. I was 20 years old at the time and I was as giddy as could be. I think it was Bill Clinton who said an alien invasion would unite the world. I don’t think we even need that. I believe we just need one giant, years-long blizzard to unite the human race.

When I was younger, my dad had four snowmobiles to his name. As a child he would seat me in between himself and the handlebars when he went for a snowmobile trip. He went fast, really fast for my little brain. The whole time it felt like being on the edge of chaos. Within my helmet, my eyebrows would be up to my scalp line, eyes wide as cue balls, teeth bared while I’d go “GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.” My little helmeted bobblehead would clunk clunk clunk against the front of my dad’s helmet a thousand times per trip whenever we hit a bump bump bump.

Whenever I walk into a typical grocery store wearing my Doctorate Martens after a snowfall, due to the lack of grip from wear, I do tend to slide into other patrons, as I go to exit an aisle, stop myself to look both ways, but keep sliding. I will be replacing the PhD Martens with another pair soon.

I detest driving in the snow, but I love walking through it. There is a desolate but serene feel to it. During a heavy snowfall a few years ago, a couple friends and I walked 5 miles round trip to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory on the 16th Street Mall. I have felt few things as comforting as the warm, visible cloud of chocolate aroma that came wafting out of the shop when we opened the door on that cold day. Two days prior it was 70 degrees and sunny. “Only in Colorado!” And many other states.

I look forward to the snowmen that may be built after these recent storms. After the last one, someone had built a picturesque snowman in the front yard of a house I pass by on my walk to work every day. As each day passed, I would watch as it slowly drooped and slumped more and more, whittled away by the wind until it was just snowdust, like an immaculate sand mandala being blown away by Buddhist monks.

I also like ice skating and snowshoeing, though I have yet to do either of those things this season. I think it’s endearing that humans (and other species) create activities of perpetual motion with every element of nature or precipitous phenomenon. We think, “I don’t know what any of this is, but I bet I could glide across it somehow,” at the sight of a field of snow, a frozen lake; the sky, even. If goo started falling from the sky and accumulating on the ground (not out of the realm of possibility at this point), we would invent goomobiling and goo skating. Gooshoeing, even.

I have not fully laid in the snow in several years. I would like to go to the thrift store or Sierra Trading to buy snow pants and winter gloves and winter boots with the express purpose of lying in the snow for an indeterminate amount of time. After sliding down and walking back up the twenty foot hill to the right of my house thirty or more times, my legs about to give out, I remember laying myself down halfway up the hill and lying there for what felt like hours, letting the day go by as the occasional distant rumble of snow plows swept by. I remember the plows pushing all of the snow in the massive Kmart parking lot into a giant snow mountain in the center of the lot, so packed it would hurt to kick.

I don’t ski or snowboard.

The vast majority of the human-constructed world is held together by nuts, bolts and screws. The stability of our nation operates under an unspoken honor system and trust that we will not tear down the walls of our neighbor. With one drill we may start a revolution.

When I am in a supermarket (unironically my favorite place), I think about how I could deconstruct the whole interior: the shelving, the doors, displays, etc. Since it is unlikely that anyone would join me in this quest of deconstruction, I would have to slowly loosen all of the screws and bolts over time without anyone noticing, entering Safeway daily with a screwdriver or wrench, unwinding everything until the whole building is wobbling. Then, one day, finish the job and take the whole thing apart. Then, put the pile of Safeway on a flatbed truck and bring it to Goodwill to donate. ‘Red Tag Sale – Safeway store – 50% off, assembly required. Employees sold separately.’

If I were president and I had to wage war, I would not use conventional weapons. I would send in thousands of soldiers with drills, hammers, and crowbars, to neatly disassemble the entire opposition country. This would be much less destructive, and much more eco-friendly, which we need, since the military is the biggest polluter on the planet. We would simply take apart the opposition’s cities and procure them until they capitulated. “Where did North Korea go?” “Nebraska.” “What do you mean?” “It’s in a warehouse in Kearney.”

I wish I paid more attention when I helped my Dad work on cars as a kid, because I’d also like to deconstruct every motorized vehicle in the world. I loathe cars. A subject for another time. Very heated.

I would like to disassemble Denver and put it in a storage unit. I do not like the way it is constructed. I do not like the concept of Denver. I do not subscribe to the abstract notion of it. I would like to carefully take it apart wall by wall like a fragile LEGO set and put it in a box. Then, I’d like to put it in someone’s attic until a curious child finds it in 50 years, blows the dust off and builds it how they want.

Until then, Pomainville, formerly known as Denver, will be built by the people, for the people. No zoning laws, no land ownership, no property value. If you have wood, stone, or some other organic material, and you have the gumption, you are free to build a structure where you please. No feudal landlords, no gatekeepers in business-casual wear asking for two million dollars for access to an upscale box while there are thousands without a roof over their heads. That’s so ten minutes ago. In Pomainville you can simply go up to someone and say, “Hey, just so you know, I’m going to put up a structure here,” and start building. I mean, you don’t have to say anything, but here it’s considered the neighborly thing to do. If the others don’t agree, they can deconstruct your building, and vice versa.

I’d like to put a Target in the middle of a Walmart. Right inside, in the center. With a parking lot. You walk through the vast Walmart parking lot, enter the Walmart, grab a cart, start going down Aisle 1. You look over, there’s another parking lot. In the distance, a big red Target store. It’s surrounded by fluorescently lit Walmart aisles. Someone is somehow driving around inside the Walmart looking for a spot in the Target parking lot. The omnipresent Walmart roof covers the whole thing. A red-uniformed crew frantically rushes past you pushing a gurney with an injured man on it. “Triage, triage!” they yell. Ah, yes. Target has expanded their medical services. Not only do they have eye doctors, now they have emergency rooms.

Stop by your local hardware store and become a revolutionary today.

I never want to bring politics into these newsletters, but I feel the need to discuss my own brief but tumultuous brush with politics in this tell-all tale.Believe it or not, I actually was Vice President of my middle school student government when I was in the 7th grade. Ever since watching the towers fall in 3rd grade, I knew I had to run for office as soon as I could. It was a long, hard-fought campaign, but at the end of the day, it couldn’t have gone smoother for me. I’d operated like a politician since Pre-K, attempting to befriend all cliques that I could. This turned out to be very beneficial in my first run for office. For many cans of Monster and Slim Jims, I was able to bribe the bullies into intimidating the opposition. It went flawlessly, with everyone dropping out before election day, leaving just my name at the polls. In my defense, this was only to get rid of my stubborn peers who wouldn’t stop with their personal attack ads. Every day, dozens of papers with my face hung on the hallway bulletin boards that said “Jacob is pale,” or “Jacob likes Briana.” And so what if I did?

The policies I ran on were quite popular, with the abolition of four organizations being my main campaign promise:

     1. The PTA – “Let’s get parents out of education.”

     2. The History Department – “Let’s look forward, not backward.”

     3. The National Honor Society – “Let’s knock the elites down a peg.”

     4. The Alumni Association – “Once you’re done, you’re done.”

I proposed Paid Family Leave, a program in which we students pay our families to leave, so we can party at their houses in peace. I also proposed not only Free School Lunches, but Free School Desserts and Free School Dinners. This was unpopular with cafeteria staff. I also vowed to never take money from corporations.

What’s weird about student governments is that they don’t run on the same campaign, it’s all individual students running for different positions. So me running as Vice President was completely independent of whoever was running for President. “Why not run for President?” you may ask. It’s sort of the story of my life – I’d rather not be the face of things, preferring to be an influence behind the scenes. Plus, “Vice President” sounded cooler to me at the time.

So I get elected and roll up my sleeves to clean up the mess of the last administration. “Time for a shake-up!” I said in the school bathroom mirror. Within ten minutes of our first weekly meeting in Mrs. B’s, I felt for the first time the speed of bureaucracy and procedure moving like blackstrap molasses, bogging down progress. How could I change the 7th grade at this rate?

Well, in a cruel twist of fate, our 7th grade president was assassinated. Unknown sniper on a distant grassy knoll. Georgina had fallen. 

I had to take over the presidency, and what a pain in the ass that was. There were all kinds of conspiracies. She did have some very polarizing stances, like removing peanut butter products from the middle school bake sale. This was her most adamant stance, being allergic to the food herself. A lot of people wanted her head for that one, the parents included! Protests ran amok. It could have been anyone on that grassy knoll. I did receive a shipment of peanut butter with a letter from Skippy® congratulating me on the new position a few days later, which was nice. I quickly vetoed the Peanut Butter Ban Bill, and doubled down on nut butters at middle school bake sales. 

 As the school year was coming to an end, along with my first term, Skippy®, Jif®, and Smuckers®, called a meeting with my administration, which was a kleptocracy at this point, and announced they had formed a Super PAC called The People’s Peanuts that would fund my re-election. I declined, deciding to resign from public life and shift my focus to playing Xbox. I thought I had the free will to do that. Little did I know that the dark pact with the devil named Skippy® was sealed. For almost the past 20 years I have been bound to do peanut butter’s bidding. Sometimes when I’m ordering for the frozen department, an unshakable force comes over me, and I find myself ordering several cases of frozen peanut butter-covered banana slices that we don’t need. The worst part is that I love peanut butter. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that we cling to that which brings us suffering. God help us all. Free us from the shackles of Smuckers and government bureaucracy.

It’s funny to me when a company comes out with a new product that they claim is way healthier than their original product. I saw an ad for Gatorade Fit the other day that touted, “no added sugar, artificial sweeteners, or added colors,” nor all the other crap they put in regular Gatorade. But they’re not going to change regular Gatorade, or take it off supermarket shelves. They’re like, “Here we have Gatorade Fit, a nice clean electrolyte beverage, but yeah if you’re fine with drinking toxic waste that comes in 22 flavors, we still have regular Gatorade over here. We wouldn’t deprive you of your power of choice.”

In a few years there will be another Gatorade iteration, cleaner than Gatorade Fit; more refined. Gatorade Light? Actually, I’ve just learned that GatorLyte is a thing. Ok, apparently Gatorlyte has more electrolytes and less sugar than “Gatorade Thirst Quencher.” They’ll come out with another iteration in a few years called something like Gatorade Pure that’s literally just plain spring water. All of this electrolyte business has to be bullshit, right? I don’t think our ancestors needed Gatorlyte™ or LiquidIV™ to hunt a woolly mammoth or to run dozens of miles a day.

Someone said to me the other day, “Regular water doesn’t hydrate us enough, we need electrolytes added to it.” HUH? It’s water! That’s like saying air doesn’t sustain us enough, we need more argon added to it – preferably by a for-profit corporation. Maybe I’m wrong – you all know how anti-science I am.

I don’t mean to focus too much on Gatorade. There’s also Lightly Salted Pringles, with 50% less sodium than Original Pringles. On the Pringles website, under Lightly Salted Pringles, it says, ‘Salty snacks taste so good, but sometimes you gotta ease up.’ Classic gaslighting. I actually prefer the lightly salted though.

I guess I am focusing a lot on salt in this transmission. Please tune your radios to “Shake It Like a Salt Shaker” by the Ying Yang twins. I do like salt a lot, though a very salty pretzel or chocolate salted caramel may throw me into a coughing fit. My mom kept an eye like Sauron on my salt shaker use – more than a slight sprinkle on her homemade dinner and I was in for a firm talking-to. These days I prefer a light shower of Garlic Salt on my broccoli and eggs.

Have you noticed there have been more and more regional salts cropping up in stores? Celtic salt, etc. Maybe the Himalayas are running out of salt. Big news, if true. Everyone would have to turn in their salt lamps to be ground down into salt to be consumed and then distributed back among the people. There may be a day when “drill baby drill” means digging for our own salt. 100% United States Sea Salt. Where does salt even come from? Are the Himalayan mountains made out of salt? Mount Everest used to be 44,000′, now only 29,000′ because of all the salt we chipped off of it. Mountaineers everywhere are protesting.

I think brands like Gatorade and Pringles should lean more into the artificial side of things. Gatorade Xtra, with EXTRA sugar, MORE added color. Go nuts, Gatorade. I want you to put so much added color and dye into it that I have to sign a waiver. I want you to INVENT colors. Pringles SALT BLAST© , now with 50% MORE Sodium than Original Pringles. People will contract whooping cough from these Pringles.

I’d like to mention that in my inbox next to my last newsletter email, there’s a bolded note saying ‘Sent 7 days ago. Follow up?’ I guess this is me following up.

I was reading a couple articles anchored around the concept of basal cognition in the past couple days – the title of one was, “Memories Are Not Only in the Brain,” which, in part, states that, “…all cells—even kidney cells—can count, detect patterns, store memories, and do so similarly to brain cells.” Perhaps this is more evidence that the body truly does keep the score? 

I like the idea that every cell stores memories. Do you think they reminisce together? I’m picturing an old red blood cell and white blood cell floating around in a capillary lazy river sipping on amino acid aperitifs, no ice, going, “Remember that time of the great infection? We had it handled, then the antibiotics arrived and nuked everything with extreme prejudice. And those chicken nuggets that kept dismantling everything! We didn’t sleep for 4 days trying to rebuild and regenerate. The new blood doesn’t know what it was like.” This red blood cell and white blood cell are comrades who have grown old together. Suddenly their elder, a stem cell named Aegaeon wanders by, tipping his wizard hat knowingly. The blood cells bow in mutual reverence.

The other, perhaps even more interesting article, was titled, “Brains Are Not Required When It Comes to Thinking and Solving Problems–Simple Cells Can Do It.” 

A fascinating read – one small passage says, “Plants’ most remarkable behavior…they seem to know exactly what form they have and plan their future growth based on the sights, sounds and smells around them, making complicated decisions about where future resources and dangers might be located…” and shortly after the intelligence of a slime mold is discussed.

I wonder if any studies have been done on the interactions between organic plants and fake plants? As in, do the organic plants perceive the fake plants as real? The interaction between human and plant, to me and my bro-science, further exemplifies this aforementioned basal cognition. Many types of cells, not just neurons, seem to have an awareness that we’re in the presence of plants, of organic matter, and thus trigger the body to do certain subtle things which improve our well-being – similarly, I would guess that the plants and organic matter around us are aware of us. Wishful thinking maybe. I’d like to think the plants and soil are aware of my presence when I’m walking through the woods. A big fantasy of mine: to rip up all pavement and concrete nationwide and let the worms and dirt breathe. 

I have been practicing Gamelan only 6 feet away from my nine cactuses. The practice instrument is very resonant – I bet they can feel it and enjoy it. Maybe I’ll bring one of my cactuses to rehearsal so it can listen in. Maybe I will start singing to the cactuses. Maybe I will tell the cactuses about my day.

I want to be around living things. Mostly we are surrounded by dead things. I would love to completely cover my apartment in soil – just buy dozens of bags of soil and dump it everywhere until you can’t see the floor, and guests just think there is no floor, it’s just soil. Then I would plant grass seeds in this soil. I would walk around barefoot and lay in the soil. I would be very healthy, the landlord can go to hell. $38 a month for a mandatory “Resident Benefits Package,” that I haven’t seen one benefit from. As my fullest form of defiance I shall turn my apartment into the outdoors: vines will cover the walls, soil will cover the floor and counters, plants will reign.

I could also create a little island/beach in my apartment. I could fill it with a couple feet of water, then bring in enough sand to make a little isthmus path from my bed to the kitchen. You’ve heard of a waterbed, how about a waterflat? Kick back, relax, and be transported to paradise in Denver’s newest water apartment! Perks include, no electricity, no wifi, no distractions! Just the water and the sand, who learn about you and remember you over the course of your lease. Tell it about your dreams, your crushes, your fears – it’s listening! And it cares.

Warm Regards,

Jacob J. Pomainville

I sit here listening to “The Most Relaxing Waves Ever – Ocean Sounds to Sleep, Study and Chill.” 21M views. I have returned to the digital ink and paper – I will be returning to the regularly scheduled programming hereafter, so I implore you to hold off on canceling your subscriptions. I want you to get your money’s worth. I have one final hike report of the season with some complementary ponderings ~

Today I aimed to complete the Decalibron Loop, which consists of four 14er peaks: Mount Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln, and Bross. The loop is roughly situated between Leadville and Alma. It was another 4-hour pre-hike sleep night, and I left around 4am, with about a 6:15am trailhead arrival time. I have grown fond of the long, dark drive to the mountain as well as the pitch black start to hikes under the great canopy of stars.

One of my favorite moments is when I slowly realize I don’t need a headlamp anymore, and I turn around to see the reddish tint gracing the mountaintops.

It was an especially cold day, about a 5° F chill, with lots of snow and ice around. Based on what I’d read, I decided to do the loop counter-clockwise, starting with Bross.

Bross Summit

Under a spell of sadness in recent weeks (on the up and up), I have occasionally yearned to go into the mountains and disappear, even to just simply find a nice spot to lie down and close the tired eyes for a while. There is certainly a tint of carelessness to some of these mountain jaunts flavored by this existential congestion – but it was maybe halfway through the loop that I was humbled by two happenings:

Firstly, my Camelbak tube and hydration pack completely froze. This initially caused me concern, and I was cursing a bit at my ill-preparedness, as there was no probability of the temperature rising above freezing for this hike. Granted, the chances of the Camelbak bladder completely freezing were low, but it would’ve been very inconvenient to take off the Camelbak and awkwardly drink out of the giant bladder opening whenever I needed a drink. I bent the hose around to try breaking up the ice, then moved the camelbak from outside my jacket to inside my jacket so that it would be closer to my body. Luckily, despite the low temperature, I was under the sun for the rest of the loop. Eventually the hose thawed, and I prevented the hose from freezing back up by blowing the water back into the bladder after each use.

Note: I was originally thinking, there’s so much snow around me, I could just eat the snow, right? Apparently this is not what you want to do in an emergency situation. Put simply, consuming snow will take more energy from your body – if you’re dehydrated already, it will make you more dehydrated. If there’s one takeaway from this report, let it be that.

The second happening: There was a section from Bross to Lincoln that I needed to traverse across that consisted of slick, hardpack icy snow. I’d estimate it was about a 35° angle, with, of course, a cliff at the bottom of this slope. One traverses across it, not up it. I had spikes on me, but I foolishly started walking across without putting them on – a mistake – the snow was even slicker than I estimated. About halfway across this 20 yard section, I start sliding on my hands and knees down the slope towards the cliff edge. After sliding 10-15 feet, I thrust my arm with gumption into the snow as a mock ice-axe, putting myself to a temporary stop, my feet providing some support. With my nerves on edge, I stayed as still as possible while fishing my spikes out with my free hand, and wrestling them over one boot at a time as best I could. After a couple minutes, they were on, and I marched carefully back up and across this section to make my way towards Lincoln. I didn’t take the spikes off until getting back to the car a few hours later. I don’t want to make myself out to be some Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible – it probably wasn’t as harrowing as I’m recalling, but it gave me a fright.

Despite these couple of concerning moments, part of me was glad that I hadn’t seen a single person on the mountain. It felt like I was in the wild country.

Just about to the summit of Lincoln

The wind’s snow poetry – just before Cameron summit.

Looking at Mount Democrat, the fourth peak, from Cameron. It’s a wonder to me, on any 14er hike, when I see an epic peak in the distance and think, “Am I really going over there?” And, one step at a time, one finds themselves there.

Mount Democrat Summit

I was back to the car at 11:45am. It’s felt good to do some adventuring and climb lots of 14ers in the past few weeks. I may move on for the season and see what calls to me next. I wasn’t completely sure I could complete this loop, but lately, with all things, I’m aiming to just find out rather than wonder. I think this is good practice. Go find out. Better to live until you collapse rather than wither away in worry. I could use this reminder often.

I had been wrestling in recent weeks with the question of, “Are we permanently stuck on repeat, unconsciously or subconsciously resigned to repeat the same patterns we and our brains/minds have forged years ago?” It’s a loaded question that I’m not equipped to answer, but I believe the answer is no. Even just having the awareness of potential patterns and biases is massive, which can lead to choosing differently, as much resistance as there may be. I can’t really expound on this question at the moment – long day. These are elementary ponderings anyway – though I will say: I’ll sometimes have a question or insight within myself, and a voice will say “Someone’s thought this before, and articulated it much more eloquently.” But I say to that: billions of tables have been built before – what does that do for me? If I build one single table with my own hands, I learn profoundly more from that one table than all the tables that have been built before combined. Thus, if I come to a conclusion within myself, of my own accord, that is worth one million times more than some old eloquent quote repeated to infinity. Likewise, I am one thousand times more inspired by the people in my daily life than all other inspirational figures known the world over.

Still listening to “The Most Relaxing Waves Ever – Ocean Sounds to Sleep, Study and Chill.” Clocks going back tonight. I don’t endorse that. Many whimsical topics in mind for future newsletters. Thank you for being here.

This one has pictures!

Hike Report 10/10/24

Woke up at 3:50am to head out at 4:00am for the Longs Peak trail. I love how hiking websites will say ‘make sure to get a full night’s sleep’ and then ‘get an early start by 2 or 3am,’ as if we can make ourselves fall asleep at any time. I arrived at the trailhead at 5:30am and there were already a handful of cars there, with more pulling in. It was pitch black, and my god, the stars! So strong and so close. I haven’t seen stars that clear and bright since the days when I’d walk outside my mom’s house stoned at 1am and stand with my bare feet in the soil, watching the stars and listening to tree frogs while fireflies mingled all around.

Walked through the woods, headlamp on until sunrise. Saw some bear scat which put me on alert.

The red sun rises

Shortly after sunrise, I caught my first glimpse of the summit in the distance.

Though my pack was only 15-20 pounds, it was very uncomfortable for some reason within the first half hour, leading to quite a neck and headache.

I arrived at the Boulderfield by 9am. Quite literally a field of boulders. It was more of a haul getting through/up this than I anticipated. Plenty of scrambling with 3-4 touch points, though no risk of falling a great distance.

The keyhole! It was my goal to at least reach that point. This is about 6 miles into the route.

The temperature in this area was around 35 degrees. Heavy winds pushed me around a little while creating a wind chill that made the temperature feel much colder.
I sat in the hut adjacent to the keyhole for temporary refuge. Another man sat with me and we contemplated pressing on. “I’m going to see if the wind dies down,” he said. “Let me check the other side of the keyhole,” I said. I set my pack down and crawled up to the keyhole and to the other side. It was like stepping into another world. Simply incredible. Like being in Middle Earth.

I scooched back down to the hut and reported that the wind was a little lighter on the other side. We sat for a little while longer. He decided to go for it. I told him I’d sit for a few more minutes. After these few minutes I crawled back up and crossed over the keyhole. I started slowly making my way down the Ledges. Now, I do not like heights. To the right of the Ledges is a significant dropoff and there is little room for error. Of course, this is no Torre Egger, but I’m no Marc-André Leclerc. Hundreds of people do this route every year – but my scrambling/climbing experience is mostly limited to controlled indoor settings with plenty of other people around. And did I mention I don’t like heights?

Anyway, I make my way carefully down the ledges, and even get about 3/4 of the way through them, when I get to this one problem that was very exposed. I made the mistake of looking down to my right at the drop, and slipped a little. I felt a visceral feeling that I haven’t felt in probably over a decade – mortal fear physically shuddering through my entire body. I clung to the rockface and thought for a brief moment. Even if I made it through this, I had to get through the next three sections, which are arguably more treacherous than the Ledges in terms of risk, and then I’d have to traverse the same route coming back. I decided to turn back – my first time doing so in a situation like this. If I’d had someone with me that isn’t afraid of heights, I probably could’ve calmed my nerves and pressed on. To another person, it may not seem like a big deal. If any specific training would help me get through that in the future, it would probably be more climbing, especially outdoor. Still, Longs is one of the most incredible hikes I’ve ever been on. It felt like a proper adventure – I wanted to read Lord of the Rings again when I got home. Many more pics, but I can only put up to 25MB in this email.

Hike Report 10/12/24 (brief)

Felt I needed to summit a 14er after turning back at Longs. Headed out for Quandary Peak at 5:15am, arrived at 7am. Almost full parking lot. 36 degrees. Very busy trail. Someone on Alltrails said this trail is like a glorified stairmaster. While hyperbolic, they weren’t entirely wrong. Just a straight incline the entire way. Doing the Manitou Incline the other week helped prep for this. I summitted at 9:35am, hung out for 15 minutes, then practically bounced down the mountain like a runaway tire and made it back to the car at 11am. Didn’t see any mountain goats, which was a little disappointing, but I was able to see lots of fall colors near the base and on the drive back to Denver. May go for Grays and Torreys next week, weather permitting.

~ Quandary Summit ~

The Longs Peak trail in particular was one of those times in life when I think, “Wow, something is really happening.” I think these moments are important. Other examples include traveling, doing the comedy show (still waiting on the recording), trying to learn Gamelan – just pushing oneself, I suppose. I’m a big proponent of the sacredness of daily small moments, but these “larger” moments have a different quality. Does this make sense? They are born from a junction, the action-point prism – in which doubt is put aside and you say to yourself, “What if I took one more step?” And that one additional step opens undiscovered worlds. The audacity to try. The naivete of thinking you can do whatever you want. Naivete is beautiful and should be held onto.

A tangentially related thought:
If you have experienced something that has awakened you to some degree, some part of you, that experience will never leave you. It will always serve as a reference point in regard to the ever-expanding possibilities and power within yourself. When you are feeling down and out and you can’t possibly imagine how you’re going to shift things, look back at this experience/previous state you were in prior. You know that that state or experience was real and that it came from within you; so the evidence points to you being capable of transcending yourself, and the previous notions you had about yourself and the world. Once you have that experience, there is no going back. This could be a profound internal or external trip, a relationship, a peace within, a meditative state, a state of euphoria from socializing, dance, extreme physical exertion, etc. This is why we strive to transcend. Once we reach a higher state, there is truly no going back. One needs only look back for a moment for reassurance, and then the most exciting part comes: discovering the unknown dimensions/elements of ourselves through a constant state of Yes. Yes to ourselves and the world. “Yes is a pleasant country,” wrote ee cummings. Life is beautiful when we say yes. Life brings us challenges so that we may discover untapped power within ourselves and show us our eternal limitlessness. It knows we’re up to the task. Anything you’ve truly set your energy on has come into being, every time.

This has been discount Tony Robbins, signing off from this #10 electric mail letter. Thank you for tuning in.

I was raised on a forest-covered mountain. A modest but roaming mountain that stretched across half the town. The whole land is covered in a sea of dense trees that, from above, looks like a thick, warm green blanket (I am a fiber of this blanket.) Having little else to do, I would alternate all hours between smashing rocks to inspect the layers inside, and wandering through the forested mountain with no particular aim. This sometimes resulted in the construction of stick forts/canopies, or the brewing of a mock herbal remedy using a makeshift mortar and pestle and any mixture of organic material scattered through the woods. Stepping into these woods from the backyard was like stepping into a different world, the real world, as if there was an invisible portal between the yard and the treeline. Once inside, the trees towered over you in every direction, and stretched far into the sky like a congregation of crooked arms giving praise to the sun. I looked up and was dizzied by these monolithic beings. Vines many meters long would hang almost miraculously from these trees, which I would swing from slooowly but steadily like a careful monkey. Though I couldn’t quantify it, I felt intuitively that I was part of a grander intelligence, something ineffable. Those who grow up in a city may feel a similar sensation by the gargantuan buildings all around, but I think the silence of mountains carries a deeper wisdom. On one of the crests of this backyard mountain was a little clearing for hang gliders and underage drinkers. Mostly hang gliders. Seeing the occasional neon pink parenthesis in the sky floating around the mountain gave the same feeling as seeing a rare bird (like a tanager, our school mascot.)

At ten years old I began hiking more regularly, trekking some of the Adirondack 46ers with my mom, and my stepdad Bill, an experienced mountaineer. I loathed the early weekend mornings, but once I hit the trailhead, I would take off running, viewing the gnarled roots, rocks, and creeks as part of a long obstacle course that I had to summit as quickly as possible. I would then tumble down the mountain and wait at the parking lot for 45 minutes for Mom n Bill. On one hike, my older step brother joined us. On the summit, I saw him lying prone on the ground, fingers over the edge of a cliff, peering down hundreds of feet. Since I thought he was cool as a cucumber at the time, when he got up and walked away, I mimicked him and laid down on the ground to peer off the cliff. After a few seconds, I felt the momentum of my body shift off the cliff. Just then, Bill grabbed my ankles and stopped me from see-sawing off into the deep ravine. Later on, my step brother and I got lost on the way down, and hitchhiked back to the parking lot.

Like many transplants, the mountains played a big role in my coming to Denver. In 2013 and 2015, during some North American road trips, I had the privilege of experiencing the mountains of Colorado for the first time. The Devil’s Thumb, Mt Bierstadt, and Devil’s Causeway particularly sparked a love of the geography here. Unfortunately, as so often happens, I have not taken great advantage of being here as much as I would like to. Of course, now that the season is changing, I feel more called to the mountains than before.

I recently learned of Mount Kailash, the sacred mountain in China, and mythologically the abode of Shiva. It has never been ascended, as it is prohibited to do so, but thousands make pilgrimages there to circumabulate the mountain every year. I would like to do this someday, if anyone would like to join.

Last week I tried approaching my hike with an attitude of reverence for the mountains. An approach of, “I surrender to and trust in you.” Nothing to prove, nothing to conquer. Though, after the first mile, I began dismissively thinking, “I could do Longs Peak, easily.” Then I saw Grays and Torreys peak in the near distance and thought many times, “Ugh, I could’ve done Grays and Torreys today.” I considered making my way towards those peaks, but this would’ve added hours to the trip and I wanted to be back in time for pickleball. The main difference between the peaks I was doing and Grays/Torreys is that the former are 13ers and the latter are 14ers. 14er sounds more impressive than 13er to some people’s ears. It’s embarrassing enough that I don’t have the latest and greatest hiking clothes – how embarrassing it would’ve been if I was only doing 12ers or 11ers – why even go outside at that point? Nevertheless, all I could do was laugh at my own mind. Like many action-points in life, several motives went into this venture. The action-point (decision) is a prism – multicolored rays of light go into this prism in the form of pride, shame, love, fear (joy paralyzed, as I heard it referred to today), curiosity, etc. – they are concentrated into a focal point in the prism – they are then refracted and emitted out of the other side of the prism, into other multicolored rays of light, like confusion, hope, grief, excitement, etc. Rarely is there a large decision in which one white light goes into or out of its prism, which I find comfort in when experiencing a stew of feeling, as it gives ample air for all rays of light generated from our infinite inner sun. It isn’t a novel thought to say that the mountain exposes the ego in many ways – countless books and films have portrayed this phenomenon. I was also humbled by false summits on this hike, which fool me physically and metaphorically more often than I’d like to admit. Life is filled with “false” summits, though they are all real, and the views are always worth it. Sitting at the summit of each mountain, I search for myself. But the closer we examine anything, the more elusive it becomes; it disperses the closer we think we’ve become, like swimming underwater trying to snatch a leaf with a slow-motion matrix swing of the arm. We feel fear, we feel worry – we sit and look closer, try to locate it, pinpoint it – the examination disperses the sensation, the hollow remains. Examine the mountain: where did it go? Break out the telescope-microscope to play how-low-can-you-go and the same phenomenon occurs, everything swims away like a flock of birds or a University of fish. What’s your favorite fish?

Three dumb jokes based on true events:

Man, my brother-in-law is a real idiot. The first time he came to my Dad’s house for Christmas, he looks at the countertops in the kitchen and goes “Nice countertops, are these marble?” My Dad, incredulous, goes “No, they’re granite.” He made the same mistake after dinner: My mom brings out a cake and he asks “Oh nice, is that a marble cake?” and my mom, offended, goes “No, it’s granite.” What an idiot.

Two fools are standing in an empty room, Bob and Tim.
Bob says, “I need to know the square footage of this floor so I know what size rug to get, but I don’t have a tape measure!”
Tim replies, “That’s fine, I’ll just measure the room with my feet!” and starts walking across the room.
As Tim walks halfway, Bob asks, “Wait, are your feet 12 inches?”
Bob replies, “Oh I’m not sure, do you have a tape measure?”
Tim says, “No, but we can walk over to the store and buy one.”
Bob and Tim buy a tape measure at the store and come back to the room.
Bob says, “Ok, let’s measure your feet.”
Tim’s feet turn out to be 11 inches. They set the tape measure down.
Bob says, “Ok, we’ll count how many steps you take across the room, multiply that by 11, then divide by 12 to figure out how many feet across the room is.”
They both nod at each other in satisfaction and Tim starts pacing across the room.

You can tell how frequently someone goes to Outback Steakhouse by how high their jeans are on their body. I once saw a man at Outback wearing his jeans so high he was looking through his zipper.

This message is brought to you by Exaggerations, the hottest new store selling comically oversized clothing to anyone who’s someone. Born in a fever dream, now gifting the threads of your dreams. Sale of the moment: Buy 10 t-shirts, get a 10% chance to get 10% off your next 10. Next 10 minutes only. Exaggerations: Take up space – you deserve it.

I had a striking realization the other day: We never celebrate birthdays on our actual birth day. The day we’re born, there is a special sense of togetherness and jubilation, sure, but there are no gifts, balloons or cake commemorating the actual, day one, birthday.

I learned this the hard way recently: I knew my sister was going to give birth any day now (I could already envision her flipping through her book of nonsensical names,) so I went birthday shopping in anticipation of the big event. Just a few days later, I get the call: The baby is here! I leapt down the mountain I was on, got all my things together, and hurried over to the hospital within a few hours.

I burst through the door with an armful of wrapped gifts topped by a supermarket cake and a swarm of balloons in tow. “Happy Birthday!!!” I beamed, a few balloons bursting violently as I barely squeezed the cloud cluster through the door frame. My sister winced at each bang, but smiled at my entrance.

“What’s all this?” my sister asks.
“Gifts and cake for the birthday boy! It is his birthday, after all,” I said with an enthusiastic grin.
She laughed. “Well that’s different.”

Having countless more important things to do that day, I wasted no time getting out the gifts I had carefully selected earlier in the week.

“OK, here’s gift number one!” I exclaimed, and thrust the wrapped gift at the newborn in my sister’s arms.
“Be careful!” my sister scolded.
“Just let him open it,” I said.
“He can’t, I’ll just do it,” she replied.

My sister tore the wrapping paper away to reveal a Tonka dump truck toy.

“I didn’t get it because he’s a boy, I just thought he’d like it,” I said.
“Great, well…thanks. I’m sure he’ll play with it when he’s a little older,” she said.
“Show it to him, let him see it,” I insisted.
“He can barely see, he’s three hours old,” she replied.

I hung my head. “…he doesn’t like it, does he?” I said, dejected.
“I’m sure he likes it,” my sister replied.
“No he doesn’t. I can tell,” I retorted. “God, I knew this would happen! I don’t know what the hell he likes, so I take a gamble, and here we are!”
“He doesn’t like anything yet! He doesn’t know what’s going on!” she shouted.

I squatted down and got in the baby boy’s face. “Even if you don’t like it, you could at least say thank you – what, your mother never taught you any manners!? Were you born yesterday!?”
“No, he was born today!” my sister exclaimed.

“I don’t know anything about my own nephew!” I yelled, my face beet red with shame and rejection as I threw the rest of the gifts in the hospital garbage in a manic frenzy.

“Fine, forget the gifts. I thought I knew him, but I guess I was mistaken. You know, he’s going to have to start being consistent with his opinions if he wants to make it anywhere in this life,” I said.
“Whatever you say,” my sister replied.

A mariachi band started streaming through the door, already playing joyous, celebratory music.
“It’s off guys, get out, it’s off,” I said, waving the band off. They started slowly marching backwards back out the door, their music slowly deflating down the busy maternity ward like the birthday balloons sinking to the floor in the corner of the room.

I took the cover off the chocolate sheet cake I brought, which simply said in red icing: ‘Welcome to the World, BABY!’
“I didn’t know what his name was, so I just had them put that,” I said. “What is his name, anyway?”
“Orson.”
“Of course it is. Alright, does he have any allergies?” I asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“God damn it!” I yelled, flinging the cake out the hospital window, watching it sail down ten stories then splat on the hood of a pale blue Ford Focus.

The moral of the story is to be careful who you throw a birthday party for, because some people, like my 15-hour old nephew, won’t recognize the effort that went into putting it together.

My Official, Abridged Statement on, and Personal History with, Pizza

My introduction to pizza began with the book Pizza Pat by Rita Golden Gelman. Pat looked like the friendliest pizza chef in the world, with love being his secret ingredient. My first real experiences with pizza were on Friday evenings as a child at my mother’s house. She was quite strict with what we ate, so on a Friday evening when she would break out the jar of Ragu sauce and bag of off-brand shredded yellow cheese, I knew I was in for a treat. She would buy a stick of pepperoni and slice it herself, and would cut it extremely thick.

This is a habit of hers that she has not outgrown in thirty years. When it comes to cured meats, I welcome the thickness. However, the last time I visited home, she made veggie burgers topped with lettuce and tomato, which she cut herself. The tomato occupied about 50% of the real estate of the sandwich, sliced about as thick as the New Testament. “Did I cut the tomato too thick? she asked. My stepdad and I shook our heads, before biting into the all-new Hothouse Tomato Burger®.

The thickly cut pepperoni was all the rage to my brainwaves, which danced like seagrass at the sight of the steaming pizza pie coming out of the oven after an implausible wait. We would fold out the brown wooden TV trays that were topped with detailed paintings of geese flying over marshlands, scenes that made me think of Fly Away Home. As she turned the TV on to 20/20, she’d plead, “You HAVE to wait for it to cool off.” It never worked. A week of flavorless chicken, crackers, and undercooked vegetables left me feral for pizza, so I lunged at the steaming pie, instantly searing the roof of my mouth off of my cranium.

In the following years, I became an aficionado at English muffin pizzas, which I would bake in the toaster oven – always with pepperoni. Pepperoni is objectively the best pizza topping and always has been. In my twenties, it would be pepperoni that broke my two years of militant veganism. When I was still a kid and we started going to my stepdad’s family’s pizza nights every Friday night, there was a night that I locked myself in their bathroom and refused to come out because they said they only ordered veggie pizza (they were joking.) Also, I’m not big on the trendy cupping pepperoni. What are we trying to cup?

When I briefly lived at my dad’s, a man who simply isn’t interested in the idea of health (perhaps he’s disillusioned with the material realm like his son?), I started delving into the world of frozen pizza: Celeste, Ellio’s (a rectangle of cardboard with red painted on it), Red Baron (the deep dish being my favorite), Bagel Bites, Hot Pockets, pizza rolls, and much more. I was never a Digiorno fan, though they did save my life once. I was walking down the street in NY years ago when shots rang out from a passing car. Thankfully, I was wearing a backpack that had a stack of four Digiorno pizzas in it, which stopped the bullets. It’s not Kevlar, it’s Digiorno! Bagel Bites were a close second for me, though the little cubes of cheese on them were unsettling. When I was vegan, I really liked Daiya frozen pizzas. Hard to find them these days. Instead you have Wicked brand vegan pizzas, a brand that brings shame to the world of highly processed vegan food.

Several years later, pizza and I took a break from each other, as I was tired of spending hours in the restroom after eating it and walking around with knots in my stomach.. We revisit each other on special occasions, though. In Galway, Ireland I went to a place called Four Star Pizza with my then-girlfriend. This restaurant name doesn’t make any sense. If they’re saying it’s four out of five star pizza, they’re admitting it’s not perfect, and if they’re saying it’s four out of four stars, they’re inventing their own rating system. I think the name is only accurate if it means four out of ten star pizza. All of us drunks gobbled it up anyway, then gallivanted down cobblestone streets while croaking out folk songs under billions of stars sprinkled across the night like parmesan cheese.

Some brief thoughts on Colorado pizza places: First mention is The Garlic Knot, which ironically had the worst garlic knots I’ve ever had. The night I tried their food for the first time, I came down with COVID-19 and had the worst chills of my life. I see that this place is now permanently closed, probably due to serving up COVID knots.

I lived across the street from Tony P’s for a while, which, after trying their pizza, I believe the full name is Tony Piss – an insane man obsessed with olive oil who responds to all his Google reviews.

Hops & Pie as well as Homegrown Tap & Dough have solid pizzas. I don’t know about you, but I like a saucy pizza. NY style pizza doesn’t have enough sauce on it! It is neat how you can wad it into a greasy ball and shove it down your gullet, but I like my sauce! These two aforementioned places get the sauce/cheese ratio almost perfect.

Ever been to Redeemer Pizza in RiNo? WAY too much cheese!! The one time I had it, I stopped at Safeway down Federal fifteen minutes later to check out what oddities would be there that night, when I was suddenly hit with an immense shift in my organs that left me sprinting out the door and peeling out towards the nearest restroom.

Jet’s and Blue Pan are pretty good. I like hard-edged, rectangular pizza.

I had Walter’s303 one time, which was actually quite good. Lots of customization. Green chile and pepperoni are a match made in heaven. I had it delivered one night, for a little solo pizza and movie date. Five minutes into Amelie and 3/4 of a slice in, I was hit with immense cosmic dread and despair. I clapped my laptop closed, threw the pizza out, and went for a walk. I left a voice note for my girlfriend at the time who was in Europe, explaining the unexplainable situation: “I can’t do pizza and a movie anymore, good god…” and stumbled around in tears for all the raccoons to witness. We got pizza from Parisi the night before our breakup, which involved a long line and bickering about whether to wait or go somewhere else, but it wasn’t about the pizza, it was that we didn’t dig each other’s existential styles.

And then there’s Fat Sully’s on Tennyson. These pizzas are HUGE. I swear they get bigger every week! Last time I was there, when they were bringing out this couple’s pizza, they had to ask everyone else to leave just to fit the pizza in the building. Ten men carried it out like a funeral procession while we all watched from outside the glass. When the couple ordered the pizza, you could tell the cooks didn’t want to make it. Every time someone orders at Fat Sully’s the cooks are looking on from the kitchen going, “Please don’t let it be pizza, for the love of god, I have a family.” They actually have a second building now that’s just an oven. I went to Fat Sully’s with my friend Jeff last year and he accidentally walked into the oven and got cooked. They cured him into pepperoni, though, and put it on my pizza, which they brought out on a forklift. I actually got a stromboli there a couple months ago the size of an airstream. I lived in it for three weeks until I got hit with an eviction notice. It was a half-bath but I had a great setup in there, a sectional, 80” TV, kitchenette, running water, everything one needs.

Though I rarely have it, I love it. Thank you, pizza.

We always hear about the horror of puppy mills, but no one ever talks about ant farms. Why are we raising new ants when there are billions without a home? Actually, upon a quick search, it appears that there are estimated to be around 20 quadrillion ants on the planet right now. If every human simply adopted around two million ants, no ant would be left out in the cold. #AdoptAnAnt

On top of that, ants have been dealing with a monarchical form of government for the last 150 million years – they have enough on their plate. I saw a line of ants marching down a sidewalk the other day. I’m assuming it was a march for worker’s rights.

I’ve only seen small ants in Colorado. Not sure why this is. I remember there being much larger ants in the Northeast, ones that might make your hair stand on end. I do think it’s cool seeing an ant carrying a little leaf or crumb.

What if bugs had car horns? Just having a peaceful walk in the middle of a field when you hear an F-350 horn right behind you, and it’s a beetle telling you to get out of the way. The outdoors would be loud as hell.

Bugs are the most unfairly reviled beings on the planet. I saw a van the other day with the words ‘PEST ARREST’ on it. It was flying around the corner of an intersection, tires screeching, presumably in hot pursuit of a mosquito. What if we actually arrested bugs? For disturbance of the peace, public nuisance, or public indecency. What would a bug prison look like? Flies and moths could just be put in a human prison cell, since they can’t even figure out how to get out of a giant window to save their lives. What conditions would cockroaches complain about in bug prison?

Modern humans have only been around for 150,000 – 200,000 years, while bugs have been around for almost 500 million years – it’s a bit unfair that we try to eradicate them when we just showed up. That’d be like driving across state lines, walking into a stranger’s house, saying, “Wow these people are annoying,” and then burning their house down. I guess that’s what colonizers do. But to end on a positive note, I’ve been seeing a relatively decent number of swallowtail butterflies in the past few weeks, which is always a pretty sight. Also if bugs had accents I feel like moths would have Canadian accents.

They say you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I’ve decided to clone myself five times and only spend time with them, thus being the average of myself. Imagine if there was an exact clone of you and you had to hang out with that clone for extended periods of time. I think I’d attack the guy within an hour.

The real point of this thoughtscatter is this:

Cops are enlightened boddhisatvas, soldiers of Vishnu with bodhicitta hearts here on earth to awaken the people.

First of all, they are in blue. ‘The thin blue line.’ In Buddhism, blue conveys a feeling of infinity, purity, health, ascension and coolness. Buddhists believe that if you meditate on this color when you are angry, that anger will turn into wisdom and intelligence. Thus, cops provoke our anger in order for us to transform it into deeper insights – modern day alchemists! The beautiful sirens coming from their publicly funded chariots are modern-day singing bowls, calling us to the attention of the present moment whenever our ears are graced by them. When we’re eating dinner on a patio under the quiet star-speckled canvas of night, we can’t help but stop what we’re doing and get present as the gorgeous, immaculate vehicles of the Dharma blur by at the speed of enlightenment, filling our ears with wails of nirvana.

The other day I was pulled over. “Do you know why I pulled you over?” the divine man asked. Aha, a zen koan to solve! I had always heard the phrase “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Well, here he is! “I’m afraid I don’t,” I said with a beaming smile, eagerly awaiting his wisdom. “You were going 98 in a 35. Inexcusably fast.” Aha! This was an altruistic gesture by the cop, a gesture reminding me to live a slower, more mindful life. I realized, then, I had in fact been going through the motions of my daily, menial life. Alas, I am not always ready to receive wisdom that calls my ego into question, so I lunged at him. The cop wrestled me to the ground and kept shouting, “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!” His mantra awakened an awareness in me that I have, in fact, been resisting myself and the uncomfortable emotions within. How often we resist life! After a five minute tussle, he then asked me, “Do you have any weapons or illegal substances on your person?” The verbiage he used was a stark reminder that I am not my physical body, and that this is just a “person” I am piloting around. Now, I wouldn’t exactly agree with the use of “your” person, because I don’t own “my” person. I think an improved phrasing would be, “Are there any weapons or illegal substances on this person?” but I digress. After he found all of my drugs and daggers, he placed my person in handcuffs, presumably to give me a symbolic yet visceral reminder that, as long as we have a body, we are bound to this material realm and its follies. I feel like he really cares. This was further driven home by the metal cell I was placed in that night, a metaphor for the physical realm chaining us from transcendence. I think all of our taxes should go to this kind of stuff.

blue pill + red pill = purple pill

– take Nexium for existential equilibrium

The principal problem I wrestle with in life is that of physical matter. I’m organizing a protest against physical reality next week. Our slogan is, “What’s the matter? Matter!”

According to Science©, apparently two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. This is very comical to me for some reason. I think of it every time I’m in a crowded supermarket. traffic jam on I-25, or when I cause a pileup on adult night at Skate City Arvada while on a date. I just saw a suggested video on my YouTube feed titled ‘Leave your body in 3 days.’ I’ll look into it – the timing might line up with my day off. When I was a kid, I could do this thing when relaxed that would make my whole body tingle and feel strange. I remember saying to my mother once, at 7 or 8 years old, “Mom I can do this thing that makes me feel like I’m leaving my body!” and she said, with alarm in her voice, “Don’t do that!” as if I might actually leave my body. The Tao Te Ching says that we suffer because we have a body. Anyone that’s stubbed their toe or shut their finger in a car door will agree.

I’ve heard countless times that we must accept the cards we were dealt, but I cannot come to grips with the full house hand of this material realm. My vision for the world, is a world in which we can go through each other. Let us stand together toward this united cause. Let us stand inside one another.

So you’re the customer experience manager? That’s nice. I feel better shopping when I know you’re managing my experience. I’m glad someone’s got my back as I navigate my metal shopping cart through the various shelves and displays scattered throughout the store like a Crash Bandicoot obstacle course, while I resist the almost overwhelming urge to T-Bone someone else’s shopping cart with absolute gumption, leaving behind a devastating scene of spilled milk, crumpled boxes, and incredulous gasps.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a manager for all of our experiences? I’d like to speak to the manager of my traumatic childhood experiences. Since they’re the manager of traumatic childhood experiences, they wouldn’t be there to lessen the weight of those experiences. What would they say? “How was that traumatic experience for you? Still need to go to therapy? Great to hear. Another satisfied customer.” Now that I think about it, I do have a psychedelic experience manager – it’s the 5-dimensional fractal elf who multiplies itself and starts a dance party whenever I travel to other realms.

Imagine the responsibility of a Life-Changing Experience Manager, or a Near-Death Experience Manager. That’s a lot of pressure. I suppose if someone believes in God, then God would be The Manager. The man upstairs. ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ Do you think there’s actually a staircase going from Earth to Heaven after you die? How high is Heaven, anyway? It’s definitely higher than Mt. Everest. Can you imagine taking a staircase all the way from the ground to the clouds or beyond? That would take forever. According to ChatGPT, it would take at least 16 days to climb a staircase from the ground to the summit of Mt. Everest. I think it’s safe to say that it would take at least three weeks to climb a stairway to Heaven. That would be the ultimate test. I think after two days I’d say “Forget it, I’m going to Hell,” and jump off.

The traffic smelled like toast today and the sun was spread onto it like butter.

The biggest elephant in the room across generations of American society is that the cherry is the most overrated fruit in the country – a dead, dystopian, old-world weapon of propaganda manufactured to forcefeed the ideal bourgeois image and outdated paradigms in general. Have you noticed this? Its culturally imposed ties to promiscuity, be it referencing the anatomy, tying a cherry with your tongue, “she’s my cherry pie,” and other popular imbecilic media references and so on. “Life is just a bowl of cherries,” “pretty please with a cherry on top,” “cherry picking,” “and the cherry on top was…” Survey the people in your life to see what they think of cherries – barely anyone considers them among their favorite fruits. Across the nation, facades of fatuous luxury estates, cul de sacs, and districts are littered with titles containing “Cherry __,” as if it’s something to be coveted. Cherries have a high sugar content, and if you munch on some of the pits, you conjure some cyanide, so the cronies and phonies can have ’em. I’d rather live in Raspberry Creek.