Thoughts of the day

It's cold again. Time to break out my base layers (aka winter underwear), such as my UNIQLO Heattech long johns. I have a small collection of base layers from the 3 winters I served in Korea. My Bonfire Radiant makes me miss my Army Goretex jacket, though I preferred to wear my field jacket for the traditional aesthetic. I discovered that wearing the Radiant with only a T-shirt as a top isn't enough to keep warm on a cold blustery day. The Radiant and Heattech long johns (with slacks, no other top) are enough for 32 degrees, 14 MPH wind, 23 degrees wind chill. My Army polypros under slacks and hoodie are toasty. The Radiant and Army polypros can keep me warm in biting single-digit degree wind chill, though I still need to add protection for my hands and face. The Radiant's powder skirt that buttons at the waist stops the cold wind from blowing under the jacket from below, though some cold air still enters from the face opening. Last winter, for the first time I recall, I became sensitive to the cold while indoors. The most striking change was my difficulty warming up in bed. To compensate, I just recovered an old, worn pair of roomy, thick cotton sweatpants I had consigned to my rag pile to wear around my apartment. I forgot that I had cut off the bottom 6 inches of the right leg. Oh well. I can still use it as intended; my right ankle will just be colder than my left ankle. I may cut off the bottom of the left pant leg and turn the sweatpants into clam diggers.

The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) National Weather Service (weather.gov) is not the same thing as The Weather Channel (weather.com).

Ugh, clothes moths. For a while - weeks at least, maybe months - occasional small bugs have flown around my apartment. I thought they were related to my produce purchases or coming in through a gap in the window screens. Today, to my dismay, I discovered the source. They're clothes moths. I was rushing out and grabbed one of my Army-issued undershirt, cold weather, men's, type 1, class 3, brown 436, 50% wool, 50% cotton's out of the closet. I put it on before noticing large moth-eaten holes by the hem with many orange granules. I then noticed more moth-chewed holes on the sleeves with more orange granules. I pulled it off and put it into a plastic bag. On closer examination, there looked to be a number of old moth cocoon shells on the fabric. The gross thing is I wore the shirt covered with the moth-eaten holes, orange granules (eggs or excrement?), old and possibly fresh moth cocoons, and who knows how many eggs and larvae. I may have scattered them around my apartment. I had a number of wool clothing items (sweaters, jackets, scarves, caps, gloves, socks, shirt) stored in the same area as the moth-infested shirt, including my treasured wool and leather high school varsity jacket. The moth-spawning shirt had been, in fact, resting on my other wool/cotton Army-issued cold weather undershirt. Sifting through my cold-weather clothing, I saw 2 larvae crawling and black granules on the closet shelf. My black Army-issued watch cap and black wool gloves also had holes, though not as egregious as the shirt. I sealed the wool clothing items in plastic shopping bags. Moth larvae camouflage well. They're small, either translucent or the color of the underlying material, fuzzy like wool, and curl up and freeze. Their cocoons look like fuzzy lint. There may be moth eggs on the synthetic and cotton clothing items I had stored in the same area, too. Eventually, I'll get around to washing everything in hot water - supposedly, 120-degree water kills moth larvae. Not the shirt, though - that's an unrecoverable loss. It was one of my favorite and well-used pieces of Army-issued uniform wear. I wonder, are the clothes moths an unintended consequence of scavenging? Update: I spotted a moth resting on a wall in my apartment. I then discovered that a wool jacket I've had since childhood that I treasure because my mom repaired it was also infested by moths. The moths go to dark places to do their business, which means they hide on the inside, back, and underside of clothes. From the outside, the jacket looked fine, but inspecting the hitherto hidden areas revealed the damage. The jacket was resting on top of another wool jacket, but like my other Army-issued cold weather undershirt, the other jacket lacked apparent moth damage. I plastic bagged them both.

Will Stuy bowling change course due to my actions? I'm disappointed and morose when I adopt a cause, know it's right, make my moves, and make no difference. It's like trying to change the course of a river by tossing in pebbles from the bank. I encouraged the team members to do what I did as a high school student, but what I did was extraordinary. Stable reform on a perennial scope can only come from the coach and assistant principal, not from the students. I pushed the coaches and assistant principal, too, but they don't appear interested in change. They've settled for the easier wrong rather than the harder right. Was the problem unsolvable under the circumstances or was I unfit to solve a solvable problem? Does it make a difference? I'm disgusted either way. Thus, MGTOW. Maybe the students will pleasantly surprise me; I won't know until next season. I worked the problem at the student level, coach level, assistant principal level, and PSAL official level, so while disappointed, I'm satisfied I made a reasonable effort to make a difference.

The walk to Stuy is 2.9 miles. I should have walked to and back from school more often in high school. I should have done a lot at Stuy differently. The walk to Columbia is 5 miles.

The Staten Island Ferry fare is free.

A Serious Man is depressingly desolate like another Coen brothers movie set in the north-midwest United States, Fargo, and nihilistic like Waiting for Godot. As in the Coen brothers' Fargo, Asian men are disparaged in A Serious Man, except as alien and sinisterly conniving rather than pathetic and buffoonishly conniving. The lack of redemption in religion is a strongly overt theme. Danny and his smoking buddy high at his Bar Mitvah is hilarious. Part of the soundtrack sounds like the mysterious sounding part of the soundtrack from The Game. The pinnacle of rabbinical authority in the movie, Rabbi Marshak, delivers the film's coda in his guidance, modified from Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love", to Danny Gopnik: "When the truth is found. To be lies. And all the hope. Within you dies. Then what? . . . Be a good boy." There is no reward for being good, however, there is retributive punishment for being bad. The protagonist, Larry Gopnik, is objectified by his family and routinely disrespected by them. The movie serves as a cautionary tale about being a docile, trusting, faithful, responsible, selfless beta provider. Confused, clueless Larry: "Everything I thought was one way turns out to be another." Friend at picnic: "Then, it's an opportunity to learn how things really are." It's a classic red pill wake-up call. I'm like Arthur Gopnik, who cries that Hashem has given him bupkes while Arthur has poured himself into the Mentaculus, his treatise on the "probability of the universe". Like my idealism, Arthur's Mentaculus happens to be true as esoterica, but is connected to nothing substantial in the world and confers no real value to Arthur. Arthur envies his brother's conventional trappings of success (job, family), but Larry is stuck in the Jolly Roger Motel, too. Arthur and Larry's dilemmas raise the question I'm asking: So what's true? Somebody to love, according to Jefferson Airplane on the soundtrack. It's a good answer; I haven't found a better one.

Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane was quite pretty when she was young and not counter-cultural.

Grantland article about DJ Short, an OG cannabis breeder. His life has truth.

WGTOW Amanda Bynes is back home with her parents from her inpatient treatment and, as expected, will continue with outpatient treatment. Is her treatment a cure, brainwashing, or both? Unfortunately, paparazzi are harassing her again like wolves on the hunt.

Gavin Aung Than draws, Calvin and Hobbes style, a commencement address that Bill Watterson gave to the 1990 graduating class of his alma mater, Kenyon College. "Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.", "To invent your own life's meaning is not easy".

My working definition of 'red pill': Red pill is this generation’s beatnik unplugging from the zeitgeist. Red pill isn’t the truth for all and it's not a membership with a normative set of ideas, so it falls short of a conventional social movement in that sense. Coalition politics is not a purpose of the red pill, though collective social action can spawn in the red pill ecosystem. Rather, red pill is a clearinghouse of ideas and a philosophical approach. Red pill scrutinizes the social ecosystem with a critical lens and promotes inquiry that’s subversive in the skepticism about socially policed, politically correct orthodoxy. There is necessarily a social component to individual truth, and red pill points the way for a re-calibration of social consciousness. Red pill is introspective with the goal of gleaning personal truth and catalyzing personal evolution in the Nietzschean sense.

Before I can begin to sync my wavelength out there, I need to figure out what my wavelength is.

M3 speaks for me, but be careful not to fall into this trap. Figuring things out red-pill style needs to include breaking down the elements. For instance, I desire socialization and solidarity, but I should take care not to conflate that want with other wants.

Reaction to Wes Anderson's animated movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox moved here. Youtube compilation of final fights from the 6 Rocky movies.

From Up on Poppy Hill by Studio Ghibli is a coming-of-age love story set in 1963 Yokohama, Japan. It's innocent, kind, and nostalgic with the kind of sweet romantic fantasy that molded my romantic-idealist conceptions as a boy. I didn't appreciate then that the model doesn't apply to me because, one, it's made-up, and two, even if it were true, I'm not a chick magnet like Gilbert Blythe or Shun Kazama. The fellowship and solidarity of the students strike a chord with my military experience and the related dreams reacting to my present anomie. I like the voices in the English-language version, but I don't like the liberties the American team took with the script. Assuming the English subtitles accurately translate the Japanese-language version, the original contains simpler, more straightforward dialogue. The story is told better without the embellishments and idiomatic changes in the English-language version. The incestuous, genetic attraction story angle is off-putting. Umi and Shun profess their romantic love to each other while they still believe they're genetically brother and sister. The conclusion of the story is they aren't brother and sister after all, so they're free to consummate their love. However, the question of Shun's genetic parentage isn't neatly foreclosed by the meeting with Captain Onodera. Umi asks her mom if she's sure Shun isn't her brother, and her mother responds by saying the possibility hadn't occurred to her and asks whether Shun looks like Umi's father. The thing is, Shun is a dead ringer for Umi's father. Umi and Shun also look enough alike to be opposite-sex versions of each other. It's odd that Umi's father led Shun's adoptive parents to believe he was Shun's biological father, although Onodera apparently corroborates the Tachibanas are Shun's parents. It's possible that Shun was born from an affair between Umi's father and Tachibana's wife; I wouldn't be certain they aren't related until their DNA was tested.

Amy Winehouse cover of the oft-covered Gerry Goffin and Carole King classic, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow". The song was first made famous in 1960 by The Shirelles - their version. Winehouse's version is my favorite. She was a talent.

Sweet description by a feminine girl of submitting to the love of a masculine man, stigmatized in the comments.

Ouch, again: a gut-punch example of chicks despise nice guys. The letter from Annoyed hits all the markers. She may as well have used a red-pill conversion narrative checklist. The plural of anecdote is data: I've been that guy with that girl. The destructive feedback loop described by Annoyed is really what happens. Ugly truths are ugly.

Hitori (or one man) date. Oh no.

Betapedia is depressing and enlightening.

Secular Patriarchy has an intriguing platform advocating for cultural and legal codification of complementary, traditional gender relationships. (h/t) The intense specificity in some of his positions, such as his emphases on "unconditional Chivalry" and a "Superior Power" that seems to be a 1:1 substitution for God, can be jarring, but I can't be put off by a technique I've applied in my activism.

Maggie Geha is a pretty girl. A former dancer, she's deceptively tall (5'11") and voluptuous (34-25-36).

TV sports reporters Sara Eckert, Cassidy Hubbarth, Toni Collins, and Prim Siripipat remind me of each other in their youthful fertile style.

At Grantland, Jay Caspian Kang's latest on Jeremy Lin, inspired by Lin's 2nd, recent return to MSG as a Rocket. I often find Kang's work to be somewhat cryptic, but he stays focused with this piece. As a fellow Asian American man, Kang gets the Asian American social perspective on Lin. Where my take and Kang's take diverge is that I understand the deeper issue fueling objections is a broader social-culture normative contest rather than outrage within the scope of specific offenses. The utility of aggressive reactions to slights against Jeremy Lin is following the precedent of the social-political corrective playbook established by other American minority groups that have pushed for increased normal status in American social culture. The complementary tactic to normalizing the preferred status is stigmatizing and/or marginalizing the repudiated status. It's the basic Marxist (method, not ideology) activist game of reification. Create the subject position and destroy the objectified position. Play the game or not play it, in American social politics, it's the only game.

The landslide victory by the liberal-ideologue Democratic candidate in the NYC mayoral election after 2 decades of stability and growth under Republican mayors reminds me of the saying that the 1st generation grows the family business into an empire (Giuliani), the 2nd generation maintains it (Bloomberg), and the 3rd generation loses it. The impulse to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs seems ingrained in our social-political psychology. We'll see.

GWU law professor Jonathan Turley on the Executive overextending its powers.

Interesting take on Marxist-corrupted liberalism as a revenge obsession.

The Hydra's Eternal Rebellion is as good an explanation as any for the opponents of my civil-military advocacy in college.

What is a neoreactionary? I don't know, but here's How to Look at the World Like a Neoreactionary.

What is the Dark Enlightenment? Here's a round-up. This seems to be regarded as the authoritative guide. It's subversive stuff, a widely ranging, multi-faceted counter-cultural umbrella that includes the Manosphere. The content is varied and evolving. I don’t agree with all the specific content and oppose some of it, such as the white nationalist advocacy. However, I can’t fault the ethos of interrogating the dominant politically correct culture. I applaud the search for healthier alternate norms.

Funny pic, which appears to be from a Middle East conflict, for any D&D player. Reminds me of Lisa Simpson playing a guitar and singing protest songs at the SNPP: "Come gather around people, it's high time you learned, about a hero named Homer and a devil named Burns."

I'm a sports fan, but my fandom only exceptionally adopts particular pro athletes, such as Jeremy Lin tribally, unorthodox Knicks forward Anthony Mason, and Ty Cobb historically. Russell Wilson, the young Seattle Seahawks QB, is growing on me.

Televised version of Stephen King's The Stand. It was a cheesy translation of the book, but it was good enough to inspire me to read the book. It's a good book. A list of non-zombie epidemic horror movies, including 1985 favorite, Warning Sign.

AsapSCIENCE is a cool youtube popular science site that uses animated whiteboard drawings to answer questions.

The Lake Peigneur sinkhole, most likely caused by an exploratory oil drilling miscalculation in 1980, is a cautionary tale of unintended consequences and the Seconds from Disaster lesson that unfortunate combinations of factors, mundane errors, and accidents can trigger fast-changing chain reactions with large, catastrophic effects. In such a world, a fixed, perfect-control, zero-defect mindset is incompatible with complex endeavors. Shit happens. Do the best you can with what you have to work with and prepare for something to go wrong as best you can, but from there, you can only be resilient and adaptable.

How to Start a Fire Without a Match.

Youtuber RayMearsBiggestFan offers a convenient collection of Ray Mears instructional clips. I've found Ray Mears youtube videos to be a comfortable accompaniment with meals.

Adhesive hanging hooks from the 99-cent store are junk. (And I paid $1.40.) They weren't strong enough to hold up my poncho curtain on a wall, ball cap on a door, or brush broom inside a closet. A few hours looking good, then pop, on the floor. Looks like I'll splurge on 3M hanging tape after all.

My weight has been ticking up, I believe because I've been eating a lot of starch recently: processed bread with peanut butter and jelly and bachelor meat sauce, pasta, bannock, bannock pizza, and rice. What's to blame? Meal patterns? Sleep patterns? Cold weather? Or just my compulsion to machine-gun food into my mouth until I feel satisfyingly full?

My first attempt making french fries failed. Here are tips for making them correctly. Soak out the starch. Boil in oil. Then boil in oil a second time at higher temp. When I try again, I'll use the Nesco rather than the Salton. Update: Soaking, battering, and pan frying strips of Eastern white potatoes and sweet potatoes made pretty good French fries. I haven't succeeded with the Nesco yet, though.

Mm, Beef Stroganoff (with mushroom and onion sauce, brown rice with peas, and vegetable medley). Yum. I don't know why it was discarded, but I appreciate a scavenged prepared meal. With all the chicken and pork in the diet, changing up the palate with some savory beef was a treat.

My latest bachelor stew: In the Mirro, base of 15-ounce can Goya Jack Mackeral (mackerel in brine) and 18.8-ounce can Progresso Rich & Hearty Savory Beef Barley Vegetable Soup, 2 diced Eastern white potatoes, 2 diced garlic cloves, some diced yellow onion, La Fe frozen cut green beans, approx 30 ounces of pork bone broth and potato starch water, white rice, Barilla fiori pasta. It was good. The canned mackerel worked just as well as canned salmon for half the price.

I made a bachelor stew with 1 chicken thigh, Associated frozen cut okra, La Fe frozen cut green beans, 1 sliced carrot, diced potatoes, diced garlic, diced onions, white rice, ziti pasta, and ditalini pasta. It was good. The chicken thigh produced good chicken broth for the stew.

Bachelor meat sauce made with 1 chicken breast (not deboned) worked.

My bachelor stew made with pernil pork shoulder didn't work as well as the chicken thigh stew. This time, I used the Mirro instead of the Nesco for a higher boiling temperature, but the broth from the pork was thin again. Lacking a strong-flavored meat grease, it's not a bachelor stew; it's just soup. I ended up dicing the boiled pork in order to spread the flavor. An interesting twist was using Best Yet canned Bartlett pears in place of diced potatoes; it was okay.

Bachelor sandwich: Bannock bread made with salt and vinegar, no baking soda, sliced italian sausage, melted mozzarella cheese, baked yellow onions, seasoned salt. Not bad.

Bannock bread made with salt and vinegar, yellow onions, garlic, and seasoned salt, baked in the toaster oven at 400 degrees on 5 minutes a side over oil is a good imitation of scallion pancake. The oil is the key to crisping up the bannock bread. I pretty much wiped out a 5 pound bag of flour eating faux scallion pancakes.

Mozzarella should be melted to where it just browns but before all its moisture is boiled away. That's the point of flavor.

Not all supermarket shelf bread with chemicals and preservatives listed in its ingredients is mold-free. I bought 2 loaves of bread on sale, Harvest Pride Potato Bread and Harvest Pride Texas Toast Bread. The taste, thickness, and texture of the potato bread worked especially well with PB&J. Although I bought the bread on their sell-by date, both ingredient lists included many chemicals with several preservatives, so I thought I would be safe storing them outside the refrigerator at room temperature. I was down to 4 slices of the potato bread and took out a slice to cleanse my palate with my latest bachelor stew. I bit, swallowed, and noticed a tangy flavor. When I took a closer look, I saw the slice and remainder of the loaf were moldy. I discarded them. I then examined the Texas toast bread, which I hadn't yet opened. There were 2 spots of what looked to be mold. I pinched off the spots, toasted the 2 slices, and stored the rest of the loaf in the freezer. Some brands of bread can be stored at room temperature for a long time and don't grow mold. Other brands of bread grow mold at room temperature and need to be stored in the freezer. Chemicals, including preservatives, in the ingredients aren't necessarily a guarantee that the bread is immune to mold.

Impulse buyer's remorse: The 19.6-ounce box of Pepperidge Farm Golden 3-Layer Cake I bought on sale for $2.50 is tasteless. Powder-box brownies are cheaper, thicker, and taste better. Well, now I know. I hope the 27-ounce box of Mrs. Smith's Classic Sweet Potato Pie that I also impulsively bought on sale for $2.50 tastes better. Update: The Mrs. Smith's sweet potato pie wasn't bad. A bonus is I can re-use the aluminum pan that held the pie.

Betty Crocker milk chocolate brownie mix is good, perhaps even my favorite brownie mix so far.

The Betty Crocker fudge brownie mix is okay. Update: I baked it just long enough so the consistency was just past batter and more brownie-fudge than brownie-cake. I then placed it in the fridge until it was cold - not intentionally, I only wanted to cool it faster to room temp out of the toaster oven, but I left it too long in the fridge. I spread grape jelly and sour cream on top. The BC fudge brownie was decadent: chocolatey and thick.

Oranges are surprisingly filling. Must be the fiber.

Shit: I broke the Salton. I was making chicken bone broth in the Salton, went on-line, became immersed in writing, and forgot about the bone broth. When I returned to the kitchen, the Salton pot was boiled dry, the power switch was still on, but the power light was off, and the Salton was cold. I took it apart with my Leatherman, but didn't see any part that looked obviously out of place. I don't know what's broken. I put it back together hoping the Salton would magically come back to life, but no - still dead. How am I going to cook rice now? Until (if) I buy an automatic rice cooker, I'll have to make my rice in the Salton pot or Mirro over the Toastmaster burner or maybe even in the Nesco. They're not automatic rice cookers, though, so I'll have to watch them. At least when the Sunbeam popped, it happened during normal use. The Salton breaking is entirely due to carelessness. The redundancy in my kitchenware is wearing thin. The Toastmaster burner just got promoted to the lead role and I'm running out of back-ups.

Eric