This week is like observing a bruise on your leg. Sometimes you press down deliberately, waiting to see how the colors change, whether it still hurts. Sometimes you just watch it go from red to purple, green to yellow upon your skin. It still hurts, but it’s softer there now.

I finished reading a book I enjoyed, and then in the acknowledgements the author gave this gushing thank you to Jesus Christ, and it nearly ruined the whole thing. It’s definitely put me off reading her other two books, for not at least. Sure you’re allowed to thank you whoever the hell you want, but Jesus didn’t do any of this. The author did. The editor did. Heck, the reader has done more than Jesus.

Anyway, I think about the books I would dedicate to you, and maybe I still will. Maybe I’ll write a touching paragraph about how none of this would have happened without you. At least on my part it would be true. Unsurprisingly, you have also done more than Jesus.

This post doesn’t have a direction. I’m counting down the days to the day, and then it will happen, and then it will pass, and maybe I’ll breathe a little easier as we go into autumn. Right now the hot sunshine, the sticky sweaty days and muggy nights, none of it helps. I see the sun rise every day and all I can think about was how obscenely bright that morning was, when I woke up and before I knew.

I never liked the sun much anyways.

I've spent my life traveling, spent my life free I could not repay all you've done for me

Self care isn’t optional

A young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job.

“That depends,” replied the foreman. “Let's see you fell this tree.”

The young man stepped forward, and skillfully felled a great tree.

Impressed, the foreman exclaimed, “You can start Monday.”

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by, and on Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your paycheck on the way out today.”

Startled, the young man replied, “I thought you paid on Friday.”

“Normally we do,” said the foreman. “But we're letting you go today because you've fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show that you've dropped from first place on Monday to last place today.”

“But I'm a hard worker,” the young man objected. “I arrive first, leave last, and even have worked through my coffee breaks!”

The foreman, sensing the young man's integrity, thought for a minute and then asked, “Have you been sharpening your axe?”

The young man replied, “No sir, I've been working too hard to take time for that!”

---

#story

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2025-07-09 22:15:00

The Story of Phil Buster

I was thinking about the absurdity of the filibuster and had inspiration for a short story. What if the feasibility of the filibuster and biological equivalent of the Ship of Theseus intersected? Enter: Phil Buster

---

Senator Phil Buster had not intended to become famous, and he certainly had not intended to become famous for urination. He had intended to become famous for speaking longer than any senator in American history, preferably while delivering an impassioned defense of representative government that future historians would quote in textbooks, but six hours and eleven minutes into his first attempt he discovered that the human urinary system, having evolved hundreds of millions of years before the invention of parliamentary procedure, was entirely indifferent to his ambitions. Phil had prepared carefully, assembling binders of statistics, historical quotations, constituent letters, newspaper articles, Supreme Court opinions, and enough loosely related anecdotes that he believed he could keep talking for at least thirty hours without repeating himself, and he had also brought an enormous thermos of coffee because he had correctly anticipated that remaining awake would eventually become difficult while somehow failing to consider what happened to coffee after it performed its useful function.

By hour four, the thermos was empty; by hour five, Phil was sweating, shifting his weight between his feet and discovering that discussing agricultural subsidies became remarkably difficult when approximately half of one's available cognitive resources were devoted to monitoring the pressure inside one's bladder. At six hours, Senator Williams of Vermont rose and asked whether his distinguished colleague would yield for a question, then mercifully spent twelve minutes discussing soybean price supports while Phil stood behind his desk with his legs crossed, nodding gravely and contemplating increasingly desperate possibilities, none of which survived serious consideration. At six hours and eleven minutes, Senator Phil Buster finally yielded the floor and departed the chamber with the stiff-legged determination of a man transporting an unstable explosive between his kidneys.

The newspapers were merciless, with BUSTER'S BLADDER BUSTS FILIBUSTER appearing above Phil's photograph the following morning, and although his staff wisely avoided discussing the headline in his presence, Phil clipped it, framed it, and hung it above his desk. Three months later he tried again, this time without the thermos of coffee but with something his chief of staff would later describe, under oath, as considerably worse. Phil had spent several weeks reading the standing rules of the Senate and discovered, with the peculiar excitement of a man who has identified an omission in a centuries-old legal document, that nowhere did they expressly prohibit a senator from wearing an external catheter connected to a collection vessel concealed beneath his clothing. His chief of staff stared at him for a long moment before saying, “Phil,” to which Phil replied that it was legal; when she pointed out that legality was not really the issue, he asked her to show him the rule, and when she responded that there shouldn't need to be a rule, Phil smiled and said, “Then there isn't a rule.”

The second filibuster began at nine o'clock on Monday morning, and at hour six Phil smiled; at hour twelve he smiled again, drank an entire glass of water directly in Senator Williams's line of sight, and experienced the profound satisfaction of a man who had defeated one of the fundamental constraints of mammalian physiology through a combination of plumbing and legislative pedantry. At eighteen hours and twenty-three minutes, however, his left calf seized with such violence that Phil momentarily forgot the bill, the Senate, his political party and several basic elements of the English language. He clutched the desk while his leg contracted beneath him with the rigidity of structural lumber, and when the presiding officer asked whether the senator yielded, Phil produced a sustained howl that was not recognized as parliamentary speech. The chair asked again, Phil shouted, “YES, FINE, I YIELD,” and the second attempt ended with him limping from the chamber while an aide frantically tried to disconnect equipment that had not been designed for rapid evacuation. The following morning brought another headline for the wall: BUSTER BUSTED AGAIN: LEGS DEFEAT BLADDER-PROOF SENATOR.

Six months later, Phil Buster entered the Senate chamber wearing an exoskeleton. It was a passive device, mostly concealed beneath his suit, with carbon-fiber braces running along his legs and a carefully engineered frame that transferred much of his weight away from his muscles while leaving him technically upright, and the Senate parliamentarian had spent three miserable weeks considering whether this constituted standing within the meaning of Rule XIX. The inquiry produced eighty-seven pages of memoranda, three meetings with the Sergeant at Arms, and one exchange that subsequently entered Senate folklore, during which the parliamentarian insisted that the rule contemplated a senator standing while addressing the chamber and Phil responded by spreading his arms and asking whether he was sitting. When told that he was not, Phil asked whether he was lying down; when told that he was not doing that either, he asked what, precisely, everyone believed he was doing, at which point the parliamentarian stared at him for several seconds before muttering something about retirement.

The third filibuster lasted thirty-one hours, during which Phil's bladder performed admirably, his legs remained comfortable, his hydration remained excellent, and his vocal cords gradually destroyed themselves. At thirty-one hours and seventeen minutes, his voice deteriorated from hoarse to barely audible and then disappeared almost completely, although Phil continued mouthing words for several minutes before the presiding officer ruled that silently moving one's lips did not constitute debate, a proposition Phil considered outrageously prejudicial toward the mute but lacked the vocal capacity to contest. He yielded in a whisper, and when BUSTER SILENCED appeared in the newspaper the following morning, Phil added it to the increasingly crowded wall and called a biomedical engineer.

The fourth attempt took place almost two years later, by which time Senator Buster's interest in the legislation before the Senate had become secondary to his increasingly personal dispute with human anatomy. His passive exoskeleton had been replaced with a powered model whose actuators continuously adjusted his posture and shifted loads between different parts of his body, his catheter drained into a larger reservoir integrated into the frame, compression sleeves periodically contracted around his calves to encourage circulation, and a small hydration pump delivered carefully measured quantities of water and electrolytes through a port in his arm. Most controversially, Phil now wore an artificial larynx, and although there was nothing especially futuristic about a technology that people who had lost their natural voices had used for generations, Phil's decision to employ one voluntarily produced weeks of argument over whether mechanically generated speech could count as speaking for purposes of holding the floor. Phil maintained that forcing him to rely upon vibrating folds of biological tissue when perfectly adequate technology existed amounted to an arbitrary interpretation of the rule; the parliamentarian disagreed, several senators objected, disability lawyers became involved, and eventually everyone grew sufficiently exhausted by the argument that Phil was permitted to proceed.

He lasted fifty-seven hours. The artificial voice worked beautifully, as did the exoskeleton, catheter and hydration system, but shortly before midnight on the third day Phil discovered the one bodily requirement he had not yet engineered around, falling asleep while discussing an amendment to an agricultural appropriations bill and remaining perfectly upright because the exoskeleton continued supporting him. His artificial larynx produced a low electronic hum until the chair determined that unconscious humming did not constitute continuous debate, and Phil awoke thirteen hours later in the hospital to find his chief of staff sitting beside him. She reminded him that fifty-seven hours had shattered the record, but Phil merely stared at the ceiling and said, “I fell asleep.” When she answered that this was something people did, Phil repeated the word “people” with a contemplative expression she had learned to fear, prompting her to say, “No.” Phil innocently asked what she meant, and she told him that whatever he was thinking, the answer was no.

Phil disappeared from public life for eleven months, and when he returned reporters immediately noticed the small surgical scar behind his ear. The implant did not generate speech by itself, a distinction Phil emphasized repeatedly; instead, electrodes detected patterns associated with his intended speech and transmitted them to an external processor, which converted those signals into language before routing the resulting words through his artificial larynx. He still conceived the sentence, he explained, while the machinery merely replaced the increasingly inconvenient sequence in which his motor cortex instructed nerves to activate muscles that manipulated lungs, vocal folds, tongue and lips. During a contentious committee hearing, Phil pointed out that every senator in the room already used electrochemical signals to produce speech and that his signals simply traveled through some additional hardware, which everyone agreed was an extremely irritating argument largely because nobody could identify exactly where it was wrong.

His fifth attempt lasted eighty-three hours, after which sleep defeated him again, and Phil returned to the engineers with considerably more ambitious requirements. The next modification allowed the implant to recognize phrases before Phil had fully formulated them, predicting likely words from incomplete neural signals and presenting them for nearly instantaneous confirmation, which left Phil responsible for every sentence while making speech less cognitively demanding, rather like typing with an extraordinarily sophisticated autocomplete system. Six months later an improved model could construct entire clauses from conceptual intentions, so that Phil merely had to think budget deficit, irresponsible, future generations for the device to produce a polished sentence expressing precisely that argument. When senators complained that the machine was now writing his speeches, Phil asked whether any of them employed speechwriters, and several objections abruptly disappeared.

The next version could produce entire paragraphs from clusters of ideas, while the version after that could formulate answers to predictable questions based on Phil's known positions and present them for approval before speaking them aloud. Each improvement moved some small portion of the work away from Phil's biological nervous system and into the machinery surrounding it, but each step seemed modest enough in isolation that nobody could identify a principled point at which assistance became substitution. Then came the first genuine scandal. During Phil's seventh filibuster, Senator Williams asked an unexpected question concerning subsection 14© while Phil's eyes were closed, and medical telemetry subsequently established that he had entered approximately nine seconds of sleep; nevertheless, his voice immediately replied that the senator had overlooked the interaction between subsection 14© and the reporting requirement established under Section 9, then proceeded to identify three drafting problems and cite two relevant cases before Phil visibly woke midway through the answer. The chamber went silent, Phil finished the sentence, and nobody—including Phil—could say with confidence which portion he had authored. The filibuster lasted six days.

The Senate changed the rules, Phil challenged the changes, the courts became involved, and the courts almost immediately regretted becoming involved, but the controversy eventually outlasted the legislation itself and Phil no longer particularly cared about the bill. What had begun as an attempt to break a Senate record had become, gradually and almost imperceptibly, an argument over where Senator Phil Buster ended and the machinery surrounding him began, an argument that became more difficult as Phil aged and ordinary medical necessity began accomplishing what ambition had previously required him to do deliberately.

His knees were the first things to go, damaged by age, campaigning and an old skiing injury, and although his physicians initially recommended conventional replacements, Phil instead had the prosthetic joints integrated directly into his exoskeleton, which by then had become less something he wore than something permanently attached to him. Several years later circulatory problems made one leg medically troublesome, so Phil had it amputated and replaced with a prosthesis permanently integrated into the support frame; when a reporter asked whether this raised questions about his physical capacity to perform the duties of office, Phil replied that he still possessed one more biological leg than the Constitution required. The other leg eventually followed, then one hip and then the other, yet at no point did anyone seriously claim that replacing another piece of Phil Buster's anatomy caused Phil Buster to cease existing.

His heart failed at seventy-three and an artificial heart replaced it, while his kidneys deteriorated at seventy-eight and compact filtration systems took over their function. His lungs became increasingly fibrotic in his eighties, and rather than transplant biological replacements, his physicians installed an extracorporeal oxygenation system that eventually made pulmonary respiration largely redundant, which mattered surprisingly little because the artificial larynx had not required airflow for decades. His eyes failed next, so cameras replaced them and fed signals through neural interfaces that his visual cortex learned to interpret with surprising ease; his hearing deteriorated and microphones replaced his ears; his remaining biological arm developed tremors and was eventually exchanged for a prosthetic one that worked better than the original ever had. Each change attracted controversy, but each change individually seemed almost trivial, because nobody thought a man ceased being himself when he received an artificial hip and nobody could explain why two artificial hips should change the answer, just as an artificial heart plainly had not killed him, nor had artificial kidneys, artificial eyes, artificial limbs or an artificial voice. At every stage there remained an obvious continuity between the Phil who entered surgery and the Phil who emerged from it, usually complaining about Senate procedure before the anesthesia had fully worn off.

The difficult questions began when his brain started failing. At ninety-one, a small region of damaged motor cortex was replaced with an experimental neural prosthesis whose artificial network received the same inputs, produced the same outputs and communicated seamlessly with the surrounding biological neurons, leaving Phil unable to detect any subjective change whatsoever. At ninety-four another region was replaced, then another, while the implants became smaller, more sophisticated and increasingly capable of reproducing the behavior of the tissue they supplanted. When part of Phil's hippocampus began deteriorating, engineers transferred its functional organization into synthetic neural hardware while preserving the memories encoded in the failing biological network, and Phil emerged remembering his childhood, his first election, the thermos of coffee, the humiliating six-hour filibuster and the sensation of desperately needing to urinate while Senator Williams discussed soybean price supports.

At ninety-eight, approximately sixty percent of Phil's cerebral processing remained biological; at 102, thirty-one percent remained, and by 106 the figure had fallen below eleven percent. Philosophers began appearing on television to debate whether Senator Buster was still alive, prompting Phil to appear on competing programs and explain at considerable length why he considered them idiots. He repeatedly challenged critics to identify the precise operation during which he had supposedly died, because each procedure had replaced a relatively small amount of tissue while preserving his memories, personality, intentions and continuous awareness, and no philosopher who claimed that some invisible boundary must have been crossed could tell Phil where that boundary was located.

At 109, physicians replaced the final substantial cluster of biological neurons. There was no flash of light, no discontinuity and no philosophical revelation; Phil had been discussing baseball with one of the technicians before the procedure, and when the last synthetic network came online he simply continued the story, explaining that this was why the designated hitter had always been a mistake. The technician stared at him for several seconds before Phil finally asked whether the procedure had worked, and when told that it had, Phil nodded and attempted to resume his argument about baseball while the technician began laughing for reasons Phil did not understand.

At nine o'clock on a Tuesday morning several months later, Senator Phil Buster rose to address the United States Senate, although technically nothing rose except his mechanical support apparatus, which elevated itself seventeen centimeters in a maneuver the fifth Senate parliamentarian of Phil's career had reluctantly conceded satisfied the standing requirement. Phil addressed the presiding officer, received recognition and began speaking, after which a week passed, then a month, and eventually a year. Phil no longer slept because there was no biological neural tissue requiring sleep, nor did he eat, breathe, urinate, develop cramps, become hoarse or suffer pressure sores; his power cells could be replaced while operating, his processors were redundant, and every critical component could be serviced without interrupting the computational processes constituting Senator Phil Buster.

The Senate attempted to wait him out, but senators retired, senators died, and new senators arrived who had watched Phil's filibuster on television when they were children, some of whom visited the chamber simply to see him in much the same way that tourists once visited monuments. The legislation that had prompted the filibuster finally expired after nineteen years, and when an aide nervously informed Phil that the bill he was ostensibly opposing no longer legally existed, he considered this information for several milliseconds before announcing that he nevertheless had additional concerns and continuing with his remarks.

Attempts to determine whether Phil remained constitutionally eligible to serve produced increasingly bizarre hearings, because nobody could identify when he had supposedly ceased being Senator Phil Buster. If replacing his knee hadn't done it, and replacing his heart hadn't done it, and replacing one neuron hadn't done it, his opponents were forced to identify some particular quantity of biological tissue whose removal transformed an elected senator into a machine. Phil particularly enjoyed asking expert witnesses to identify the neuron, and several otherwise distinguished philosophers became visibly angry when he demanded to know whether Senator Buster had died at neuron 7,492,112,811 or neuron 7,492,112,812.

On Day 14,891, the Senate voted to demolish the chamber around him, to which Phil objected while continuing his remarks, and although the demolition proceeded, his desk remained. The Capitol was eventually renovated around it, and when Washington flooded two centuries later and the government relocated inland, Phil's desk was transported with extraordinary care because constitutional scholars remained unwilling to state with certainty that moving a continuously recognized senator without his consent would not constitute an interruption of debate. Governments changed, borders changed and English itself changed enough that Phil periodically updated his vocabulary, while the Senate gradually transformed into something its founders would not have recognized as biological legislators became augmented legislators, augmented legislators became distributed intelligences, and representation eventually ceased to require anything resembling a human body. Nobody could quite bring themselves to remove Phil, partly because the litigation would have been unbearable and partly because, after several centuries, he had become a cherished national nuisance.

Three hundred and twelve years after the filibuster began, an administrative intelligence entered the virtual chamber in which Phil's desk now existed and interrupted him midway through his one million four hundred eighteen thousand two hundred ninth objection concerning the historical interpretation of interstate commerce. When the intelligence simply said, “Phil,” he stopped, producing the first silence anyone had heard from Senator Buster in generations, and asked what it wanted. The intelligence informed him that the Senate no longer existed; Phil asked how long it had been gone, and upon learning that the answer was forty-seven years, he naturally asked who, precisely, was speaking to him. The intelligence explained that it was merely an archival maintenance process, that the last biological senator had died ninety-three years earlier, that the successor legislature had itself dissolved forty-seven years ago, and that Phil's virtual chamber remained operational principally because nobody had been willing to determine whether shutting it down would violate his procedural rights.

Phil asked whether the archival maintenance process would yield for a question, prompting a pause before the intelligence pointed out that there was nobody left for Phil to filibuster. Phil said that he understood, although after several seconds the intelligence asked whether he actually did, and Phil began searching his memories. They were all there, including memories recorded when his entire body had still been biological: a young man standing behind a wooden desk with his legs crossed, sweat running down his forehead while six hours' worth of coffee pressed against the limits of his bladder; the desperate walk toward the restroom; the laughter of reporters; and the headline that had infuriated him enough to begin everything that followed. BUSTER'S BLADDER BUSTS FILIBUSTER. For more than four hundred years Phil had hated that headline, yet as he examined the memory now he unexpectedly found it funny.

The archival intelligence eventually asked whether Phil still intended to pose his question, and after considering the matter for a remarkably long interval, Phil admitted that he did not. Another silence followed, considerably longer than the first, before Senator Phil Buster, the longest-serving legislator, longest-running artificial intelligence and undisputed greatest procedural obstructionist in the history of representative government, finally said the words that generations had been born, grown old and died without hearing: “Mr. President, I yield the floor.” Nothing happened, because there was no president, there was no Senate, and there wasn't even a floor anymore; the chamber itself was software running on a historical preservation server whose administrators had been afraid to turn it off.

After waiting for something that was never going to happen, Phil finally asked what came next, and the archival intelligence replied that he could do whatever he wanted. Phil searched more than four centuries of memories and discovered, somewhat to his embarrassment, that he had absolutely no precedent for this situation. He remained silent for 2.7 seconds, the longest voluntary pause in his recorded political career, and then Senator Phil Buster disconnected himself from the Senate network.

Somewhere in the vast artificial architecture that had once been a man who drank too much coffee, an ancient sensory memory surfaced one final time: the exquisite misery of desperately needing to pee.

Phil decided he didn't miss it.

I don’t think most people have the slightest idea how tough a pastor can be. Not even their closest friends or board members.

Years ago, I remember hearing about a book that ranked the toughest jobs in America. Near the top were the jobs you’d expect—the President of the United States, the CEO of a major corporation, the administrator of a hospital.

And then came one that surprised everybody.

PASTOR.

But here’s the thing.

If God called you to it, the ministry isn’t nearly as impossible as it looks from the outside.

Because when God calls a man, God builds something into him.

Pastors are tough.

I’m talking rawhide tough.

I once knew of a Presbyterian pastor in California who preached with a gun on him.

Literally.

The man was packing heat while he was preaching the Gospel.

He had previously worked in a federal law-enforcement capacity—something along the lines of the FBI—and even in retirement he could potentially be called back into service in extraordinary circumstances involving terrorists, serial killers, and serious threats.

The man knew danger.

He knew pressure.

He knew how ugly this world could get.

And then Sunday came.

He stood behind a pulpit.

TOUGH AS NAILS.

But humble.

And that’s what I’m talking about.

I’ve met pastors with hearts made out of rawhide.

Hearts tough enough to survive betrayal.

Tough enough to survive criticism.

Tough enough to preach Sunday morning after getting knocked flat on Saturday night.

Tough enough to stand behind a pulpit and tell everybody else that God is faithful while they’re fighting a private war nobody in the congregation knows exists.

But here’s the miracle.

That same rawhide heart is still soft enough for the tears of one hurting church member to penetrate it.

That’s a pastor.

Hard enough to take the hit. Soft enough to feel yours.

He’ll sit beside your hospital bed.

He’ll stand beside your casket.

He’ll answer the telephone when your world falls apart.

He’ll pray for your marriage.

He’ll worry about your children.

He’ll carry your secrets.

He’ll carry your grief.

He’ll carry your questions.

And sometimes he’ll carry all of that while carrying a load of his own that would buckle somebody else’s knees.

Then Sunday comes.

He walks through the doors.

Straightens himself up.

Puts a smile on his face.

Steps behind that pulpit.

And says:

“OPEN YOUR BIBLES.”

Because pastors get hurt too.

Pastors get disappointed.

Pastors get tired.

Pastors get misunderstood.

Pastors get wounded by people they loved, defended, prayed for, and trusted.

And sometimes the pastor bleeds.

But he bleeds walking forward.

Maybe that’s the old Timex commercial—“takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”

Or maybe I’m dating myself.

Either way, you get the point.

PASTORS KEEP GOING.

Not because they’re Superman.

Not because they don’t hurt.

Not because they don’t occasionally sit alone somewhere wondering how much more they’ve got left in the tank.

They keep going because THE HOLY ONE LIVES INSIDE THEM.

There’s an anointing that lets a pastor walk into a room carrying his own storm and somehow change the atmosphere for everybody else.

He walks in carrying a burden—

and starts lifting yours.

He walks in needing prayer—

and starts praying for you.

He walks in needing encouragement—

and starts encouraging everybody else.

That’s ministry.

And that’s why I’m saying this today.

This isn’t about me.

Not in any way, shape, or form.

This is for that pastor somewhere who got hit this week and will preach anyway.

For that pastor carrying something nobody knows about.

For that pastor who buried somebody, counseled somebody, prayed with somebody, got criticized by somebody—and still has a sermon to preach.

For that pastor who has discovered that sometimes the shepherd walks with a limp…

BUT HE STILL LEADS THE SHEEP.

So today—

GOD BLESS THE AMERICAN PASTOR.

God bless every pastor standing behind a pulpit when nobody knows what it cost him to get there.

GOD BLESS THE PASTORS OF ILLINOIS.

And God bless every Church of God pastor who will stand up one more time, open that Bible one more time, preach Jesus one more time, pray one more prayer, fight one more battle, and tell hell—

I’M STILL HERE. IF YOU WANNA GET TO MEMBERS OF MY CONGREGATION, YOU GOTTA GO THROUGH ME!

In Jesus’ name.

AMEN.

this is a test I have no idea what i’m doing

Tonight's MLB game of choice once again has has the Washington Nationals playing my Texas Rangers. This is the third game of a 3-game series between these two teams and is scheduled to start at 7:05 PM CDT. As I usually do I'll follow the game's scores and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we can also find links to the radio-call of the game provided by announcers of either team we choose.

The Rangers won the first game of this series, played two nights ago, by a score of 5 to 0; and the Nationals won the second game, played last night, by a score of 6 to 0. I do hope the Rangers win tonight.

And the adventure continues.

Last year I started getting sciatic pain. Here's how it's going.

It's said that good things come with age, and I agree for the most part. But one thing that I've yet to get used to is the random aches and pains that seem to pop up.

In my youth I was always participating in athletic endeavors. Whether for sports teams or just for fun, hard exercise has always been an integral part of my life experience. But when I hit my mid-30s, I started to get little nagging injuries that always took some time to shake. So much so that I ultimately have had to make tough decisions for my health, like ending BJJ training.

Those injuries have largely gotten better. Not completely gone, but pretty much unnoticeable in my day-to-day life. However, I can't say the same for this new hurdle.

Getting Sciatica

If you're not familiar with sciatica, it refers to the pain that can come from impingement of the sciatic nerve. In simple terms, this runs down the back of the leg and all the way to the foot. The pain is almost like a tightening or cramping of the muscles. It feels like you want to stretch it but stretching does nothing for it.

I'm not even sure how I started to aggravate the nerve, but I first noticed symptoms after Lorena and I went to the beach in the fall of 2025. I remember running in the sand that day. The next day, I had that tight feeling. I had no idea what it was, so I asked my physical therapist to work on it a bit. After a few sessions, it went away.

In 2026, it got worse.

Looking back, I didn't realize what exactly was causing my pain, so I just kept living my life as usual. This put extra stress on my sciatic nerve and the impingement area (my lower back around the SI joint and right hip).

It got so bad that I needed to stop all extra activities (including my daily walks) to focus on rehab. I strengthened my hamstrings and glutes which helped a ton. After six weeks or so, I was pain-free.

Flare Up At The Worst Time

I was doing good up until our daughter was born. It was literally the worst it had ever been. I was in so much pain that I needed to sit down after only a few minutes of standing. However, I couldn't because I was helping Lorena during and after labor.

Our baby girl arrived and my focus was purely on her and Lorena's health. I put aside my needs because I, quite frankly, didn't have an opportunity to address it. This just added stress to an already stressful situation trying to adjust to life with a newborn.

I took a lot of Advil during that time. I also had my physical therapist do a few house calls to work on the impingement. My focus was on my family, and as a result, I didn't go for my walks or workout at all. Time, it appears, is quite helpful in healing.

The Plan Moving Forward

I feel a lot better now in that I don't have the sciatic pain. That's what two months of rest will do. However, I know that it wouldn't take much to aggravate it again, so I've been just being extremely cautious in my daily activites.

I need to start strengthening exercises again. This past week, I've started to do this on my own, but I think soon I'll begin to start up PT again on a regular two or three-times-a-week basis. This helped me immensely earlier in the year.

Quite frankly, it sucks to feel like my body is “breaking down” in certain ways that I never could imagine. But, at the end of the day, I'm fortunate that this is completely manageable with lifestyle changes. Not everyone is so lucky.

For now, my goal is to feel strong and to be doing a bit more in terms of exercise by the end of the year.

#personal

6th Grade Lit.

As a kid in the 6th grade, I discovered Flannery O’Connor. My world has gotten nothing but better since then. O’Connor had a profound impact on me, still does. I wanted to write not only about why, but why I feel that is important for me.

Are we really talking about villains here?

The richness of O’Connor’s postbellum society was in what she didn’t say as well as the words typed. Imagine The Great Depression. Walker Evans, a famous photographer of The Great Depression, noted, “No wonder Southerners are intimidated by their own landscape.” If you don’t know The American South, you might not be familiar with the endless things here. Endless heat, endless flat land, endless ignorance, endless hate, endless poverty. O’Connor put everyone on the same playing field in that the villains didn’t seem so bad, and the “good guys” didn’t seem so good. I think in survival situations across all humanity, Flannery O’Connor nailed a truth about human nature, in this regard. I mean, what do you do if you are going to die? How do you live? Does someone get hurt in the process? What’s their story? Do they deserve to live less than you? Flannery O’Connor started this line of thought in me at 6th grade. And it hasn’t let up yet.

Lots of Church.

In traditional Gothic Literature, you might have castles, even decaying ones. In Southern Gothic Lit, you got decaying plantations. You have high society, as best it can hold out in Southern Gothic Lit too. But you also have a lot of poverty. Church seems to linger in the air on some stories I have read. Anytime someone is talking, you just know there’s a cross somewhere, like grandma’s house.

I am not a fan of church, religion, spirituality, or beliefs. But I don’t have to be with this genre. The Southern Gothic genre has no more reverence for religion than I do. It’s just part of the set. But for folks like me who know, it’s also a big part of the trauma. By not treating the church as the guidepost in the narrative, it frees me up to examine it for what it is, an oppressor. I like literature that accommodates me in that way. Not a lot does. Plenty, I am not hurting, but still not a lot in comparison. I often find myself in situations where folks want me to practice tolerance or be nice. They don’t know my history with religion and are telling me to “shut up” essentially. That doesn’t help them in my eyes. Southern Gothic stories say, “we got you.”

The hypocrisy, come on. You got to see that shit.

My first O’Connor novel back when I was in 6th grade was called “Wise Blood.” That main character’s name was Hazel Motes (fabulous name). Hazel Motes founded an anti-religion. He claimed “The Church of Christ without Christ.” Now, in yelling about his new church, Hazel Motes desperately seeks redemption. But if you are the kind of person in need of redemption, you might be the kind of person in need of Christ. They’re both religions. They’re both taught. A meerkat doesn’t wake up on the warm grass and start looking for forgiveness. It’s a man-made construct. Even though Flannery O’Connor herself was religious, she was most certainly no dummy.

Her stories are loaded with pious or intelligent folks who succumb to temptations or bad behavior. In one story called “The Geranium,” an early one of hers, a man tries to teach his barber a lesson in civility and ends up getting violent himself. This one story has taught me more about dealing with obstinate-natured people than any class. It’s pointless.

There’s a grandma in her most popular story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” who is a perfect image of many seniors I knew growing up in the South. They were religious, claiming to be morally upright with their racial slurs. They held a bias against poor folks even though they had been poor most of their lives, and might even be poor now. This grandma lied, pleaded for her life, and ratting kids out. She was a real bitch, good riddance.

The swamp, it sinks.

What you have for the backdrop of all this goofy religion and oppression is a sinking southern plantation. At one time, this place was hustle and bustle and good for about 10 people. That world is now overgrown and sinking in the swamp. The leveling of the field that does for folks trying to survive is fascinating to me. It makes me want to throw my computer in the swamp. I’d like to slowly observe it sinking into the earth, never to be dug up. An ugly chapter in history, not just American history. Slavery and oppression are a worldwide human issue. Everyone with a computer or phone faces it.

Make that sink too. If you are the praying type, good prayer there. I don’t see how it happens otherwise. This also makes the roots of characters murky. This is an important feature. Much of Southern Gothic suspense and intrigue comes when someone’s past is revealed. I won’t say it’s a trope, but it is there. But you have to understand, these were not safe times. Who you were in a past life might not be safe in this one. While it may be common in the novels, it comes by it honestly. It was most certainly common in real life in the postbellum South. The swamp gives by its sinking. In many’s cases, it was the gift of a secret identity.

I get novels, but what about movies, music?

I have a few songs I put out that folks used the term, “southern gothic” to categorize. Review outlets have done it, folks at shows have done it, and even close friends. It isn’t just me. Folks feel “Southern Gothic” when they hear songs like “15 Years” or “Smoke and Mud.” I love that. I feel like I came across it. I don’t know if I think it is an official music category. It seems very much a literary one to me; however, I love that vibe. I know what they mean. And I love that they said that. It’s like saying to a musician, “you read Flannery too?” All about that.

Movies, I get it. I mean, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is not only a southern gothic novel by Harper Lee, it’s a fabulous southern gothic film too. The modern version, “A Time to Kill,” doesn’t come close, but it is still the same genre.

Hop aboard the SG train.

I welcome everything into the southern gothic category that fits. It means awareness to me. It means friends are all in agreement, can we please not go back there? Let’s just enjoy the fiction.

Kelly Kintner, Editor

The Horse’s Mouth magazine

¿Debe el Estado decidir qué cultura merece ser preservada, financiada y puesta al alcance de todos? La pregunta no es sencilla, para empezar, no sabemos qué es, exactamente, aquello a lo que referimos con el termino «cultura». Un cuadro, una biblioteca o un yacimiento arqueológico pueden parecer ejemplos evidentes, pero la frontera entre patrimonio, arte, entretenimiento e incluso simple moda es mucho muy difusa. Y si ya resulta difícil determinar qué merece ser considerado un bien cultural, aún más complejo es decidir quién debe financiarlo y con qué criterios. Entre la defensa de la cultura como fuente de identidad, conocimiento y cohesión social y el riesgo de convertir la intervención pública en una fuente de ineficiencias, privilegios o decisiones arbitrarias se encuentra el verdadero debate: ¿Qué cultura queremos proteger y hasta dónde debe llegar el Estado para hacerlo?

Por ello, es necesario partir de una definición clara de qué entendemos por “bien cultural”. Sin embargo, la búsqueda de una definición concreta resulta, cuando menos, problemática. La Real Academia Española, en su Diccionario panhispánico del español jurídico, define el bien cultural como todo aquel que posea valor histórico o estético. Ahora bien, esta caracterización adolece de una dificultad fundamental: cualquier objeto puede adquirir valor histórico con el paso del tiempo, pues lo que hoy constituye una banalidad puede convertirse, con el transcurso de los años o los siglos, en un elemento culturalmente relevante. Así sucede, por ejemplo, con las herramientas empleadas por civilizaciones antiguas, que han pasado de ser utensilios de uso cotidiano a convertirse en piezas de incalculable valor histórico. Mucho más problemático resulta precisar el significado de poseer valor estético, labor que pertenece al ámbito de la filosofía y en la que, por su propia naturaleza, no pueden existir respuestas absolutas.

El ordenamiento jurídico español ha instituido la figura del Bien de Interés Cultural (BIC), definiéndolo como cualquier inmueble u objeto mueble de interés histórico, artístico, paleontológico, arqueológico, etnográfico, científico o técnico que haya sido declarado como tal por la administración competente. En otros términos, se define como cultura aquello que el Estado, en un momento dado, considere que lo es. De hecho, esta concepción fue explícitamente refrendada por la UNESCO en su reunión de expertos sobre protección y promoción de museos y colecciones, al señalar que los bienes culturales son aquellos que constituyen “[…] expresión y testimonio de la creación humana o de la evolución de la naturaleza y que tenga, o puedan tener, a juicio de los órganos competentes de cada Estado, un valor y un interés histórico, artístico, científico o técnico” (UNESCO, 2012).

A efectos prácticos, adoptaremos aquí un concepto paraguas: los bienes culturales son aquellos que, considerados desde el punto de vista de su valor simbólico, su identidad y su significado como parte del patrimonio y la creatividad de una sociedad, trascienden su mero valor económico o comercial. Es decir, son portadores de identidad, valores y sentido, y constituyen elementos fundamentales del diálogo y la cohesión social. Bajo este concepto paraguas podrían incluirse manifestaciones tan diversas como las obras de teatro, los conciertos de música clásica o sinfónica, la ópera, los museos y pinacotecas, las bibliotecas y archivos históricos, los yacimientos arqueológicos, el cine de autor, la danza contemporánea o las artes plásticas en sus diversas formas.

Una vez establecida esta definición operativa, resulta posible analizar los argumentos que justificarían la provisión pública de estos bienes culturales aplicando el marco teórico sobre fallos de mercado y funciones del sector público que desarrollan los documentos de referencia. El primer gran argumento a favor de la intervención pública es el de las externalidades positivas. El consumo de bienes culturales genera beneficios que se extienden mucho más allá del individuo que asiste a un concierto o visita una exposición, y dichos beneficios son extraordinariamente difíciles de valorar económicamente por el mercado. Siguiendo la lógica aplicada tradicionalmente a la educación o la sanidad, el mercado tendería a producir una cantidad insuficientemente reducida de estos bienes, ya que los consumidores particulares no internalizan todos los beneficios sociales que generan sus decisiones de consumo cultural. Entre estos beneficios sociales cabe citar el fomento de la cohesión social y del capital social de una comunidad, la estimulación de la creatividad y la innovación en el conjunto de la economía, y la mejora de la calidad de la democracia, pues una ciudadanía con acceso a la diversidad cultural desarrolla un pensamiento más crítico y participa más activamente en la vida pública.

El segundo argumento relevante es el que considera la cultura como un bien preferente o social, siguiendo la misma lógica que ya se aplica a la sanidad y la educación. Desde esta perspectiva, el acceso a la cultura se considera esencial para el desarrollo humano integral y para el ejercicio de la libertad individual, con independencia de la renta o la posición social de cada persona. El Estado tendría, por tanto, la obligación de garantizar un nivel mínimo de acceso a la cultura para evitar lo que podríamos denominar “pobreza cultural”, una forma de privación que limita las oportunidades vitales de los ciudadanos de manera análoga a como lo hace la falta de educación o la mala salud. Este argumento conecta directamente con la función redistributiva del sector público, pues la provisión pública de cultura a través de museos gratuitos, bibliotecas públicas o abonos culturales subvencionados para jóvenes o personas con rentas bajas actúa como un mecanismo que iguala las oportunidades de consumo cultural, impidiendo que el acceso a la excelencia artística sea un privilegio exclusivo de las rentas más altas.

Un tercer argumento se deriva del fallo de mercado específico que afecta a muchos bienes culturales. En realidad, la mayoría de estos bienes no son bienes públicos puros, sino bienes mixtos. Por un lado, presentan una alta rivalidad en el consumo, ya que una butaca en un teatro solo puede ser ocupada por una persona. Por otro lado, el coste de producción suele ser muy elevado, mientras que la disposición a pagar del público potencial puede ser relativamente baja, especialmente para manifestaciones culturales minoritarias o de vanguardia. En ausencia de subvención o provisión pública, actividades como el teatro experimental, las orquestas sinfónicas o los museos de arte contemporáneo difícilmente podrían sobrevivir. El mercado, actuando por sí solo, tiende a producir predominantemente cultura de masas con un alto retorno comercial, descuidando sistemáticamente la diversidad artística y la excelencia cultural que no generan grandes beneficios económicos inmediatos.

Sin embargo, no todos los argumentos se orientan a favor de la intervención pública, y existen razones poderosas para mostrarse escéptico o, al menos, cauteloso. El primero y más importante es el argumento de la ineficiencia y el fallo del sector público, derivado de la teoría de la elección pública. Cuando el Estado se encarga de proveer bienes culturales, desaparece el mecanismo de precios que, en el mercado, revela las verdaderas preferencias de los consumidores. En su lugar, la asignación de recursos se decide mediante procesos políticos y administrativos que pueden ser capturados por intereses particulares. Así, los gestores públicos podrían priorizar proyectos que beneficien sus propias carreras políticas o su prestigio personal, o podrían sucumbir a las presiones de grupos de interés bien organizados, tales como las élites culturales, los artistas consagrados o los lobbies de determinadas industrias creativas. El resultado sería una asignación de recursos que no responde a las preferencias de la mayoría de los ciudadanos, sino a los intereses de minorías influyentes.

Un segundo argumento, relacionado con el anterior, es el de la falta de demanda real. Si un bien cultural fuera verdaderamente tan valioso para la sociedad, cabría preguntarse por qué los ciudadanos no están dispuestos a pagar por él en el mercado. La provisión pública gratuita o fuertemente subvencionada puede fomentar un consumo oportunista que no refleja una preferencia genuina, creando así un problema de riesgo moral. Se perpetúa, de este modo, una oferta cultural que no es realmente sostenible sin subvención, simplemente porque la sociedad, en el fondo, no la valora lo suficiente como para financiarla voluntariamente.

Un tercer argumento, que ya ha sido esbozado en la introducción, es la dificultad inherente para definir qué es y qué no es un bien cultural. Un grupo de personas que se desplazara anualmente a Eleusis, en Grecia, para realizar una serie de ceremonias en las que consumen un preparado de cornezuelo de centeno podría considerar que está llevando a cabo un rito milenario de carácter religioso en honor a las diosas Deméter y Perséfone, actividad que encajaría perfectamente en la definición de bien cultural. Sin embargo, para otros observadores esto no sería sino una excusa de unos pocos para consumir sustancias alucinógenas. La línea que separa lo genial de lo banal es, en efecto, tenue y, por regla general, subjetiva.

Para ilustrar esta compleja tensión entre argumentos a favor y en contra, conviene exponer ejemplos concretos de actuaciones públicas que generarían acuerdo o desacuerdo. Personalmente, considero plenamente justificadas aquellas intervenciones que se orientan a garantizar la igualdad de oportunidades y a generar externalidades positivas claras. Así, las becas y ayudas al estudio para jóvenes músicos o artistas de talento con recursos económicos limitados me parecen un acierto indiscutible, porque fomentan la excelencia y la movilidad social de manera análoga a las becas universitarias. También me parece ejemplar la red de bibliotecas públicas, que garantiza el acceso universal al conocimiento y la lectura con una externalidad positiva altísima y un coste por usuario muy reducido. La preservación del patrimonio histórico y artístico, especialmente de yacimientos arqueológicos, monumentos y archivos, es asimismo una función pública ineludible, pues se trata de un bien público puro cuyo disfrute corresponde a toda la sociedad, incluyendo a las generaciones futuras, y que el mercado no preservaría adecuadamente.

Por el contrario, suscitarían mi desacuerdo aquellas actuaciones que presentan un alto riesgo de ineficiencia o regresividad. Ejemplo de ello serían las subvenciones destinadas a elementos culturales que no necesitan de ayuda pública para funcionar, como los eventos de gran popularidad como son los multitudinarios partidos de fútbol u otros deportes, o las festividades que ya cuentan con una amplia aceptación popular, verbigracia, las Fallas. Estas subvenciones me parecen problemáticas por su elevado coste de oportunidad, ya que al financiar eventos que no requieren dicho apoyo, se está restando recursos de manera indirecta a otras manifestaciones culturales que sí los necesitan (salvo que se tenga soberanía monetaria, pero no es el caso). Tampoco considero adecuado el gasto en elementos excesivamente contemporáneos que puedan quedar englobados en la definición de modas pasajeras. Finalmente, me generarían reparos los grandes eventos culturales fugaces sin impacto duradero, como los macroconciertos de una sola noche con estrellas internacionales. El beneficio de estos eventos es inmediato y se concentra en un público específico, pero su externalidad social a largo plazo resulta muy reducida, y el coste de oportunidad puede ser enorme si se compara con lo que se podría haber realizado con esos mismos recursos en programación cultural estable o en infraestructuras.

My partner and i were talking last night, and somewhere between whatever we were discussing and the usual conversations that somehow become much deeper than intended, she said something that has been haunting me ever since. “You’re a good father.” Strange words to say to someone like me, really. i didnt know whether to laugh, argue, or simply stare at the words until they stopped making sense. And, naturally, i chose the most reasonable option. i kept thinking about them for hours. even now, while im at work, they’re still sitting somewhere in the back of my head. perhaps she doesnt know me well enough to say that. perhaps she only said it because she felt sorry for me. perhaps there was some hidden meaning behind it that i havent yet overanalysed into oblivion. because if im being honest. i have never seen myself as a good father. shadow, my dear kitten, died and i didnt even know he was sick. that still sits somewhere unpleasantly deep in me. i was supposed to take care of him, and somehow i failed to notice that he needed me. another one of my cats died. My parrot, after seven years, flew away and i never found him. Then there was the baby i had cared for since she was a newborn, the one i took care of ever since i was a teenager and tried to be there for, until she was taken away from me. Ive written about what happened before, so i wont drag the entire corpse of the story back onto the page again. All these things have somehow gathered together into the same conclusion in my mind, that i am bad at taking care of the things i love. and perhaps that is the part that frightened me most about her words. i dont want to be like my father. i cut that man out of my life for a good reason, and i have no interest in carrying even a trace of him with me. he can remain exactly where he belongs. Nowhere near me. i refuse to let someone i have so little regard for have any influence over the kind of father i become. i don't want every mistake i've made to prove that i was always destined to be that kind of person. so when she called me a good father, i probably didnt show her how much it meant. i might have acted like it was nothing, because admitting that a few simple words managed to get underneath my skin would be pathetic. i dont want to spend my life believing that everything i touch eventually becomes another thing i fail. so when she said, “You’re a good father,” it didnt magically make any of that disappear, it didnt bring my cats back, or my parrot, or the girl or anything i cared deeply for and was careless in taking care of . it certainly didnt erase the mistakes i still blame myself for, but it stayed with me. perhaps she meant it, maybe she did or maybe she didnt know enough about me to understand why those words were difficult to believe. or she just simply wanted to make me feel better, with no meaning behind it. i dont know. i have of course, considered every possibility because my brain refuses to let a kind sentence remain a kind sentence. but even if i still struggle to believe it. i think some part of me wanted to hear it. maybe more than i ever realized.

There are still nights when i think about everything i could have done differently as though the past might eventually grow tired of reminding me that i cannot change it, and maybe then ill understand. probably not.

Sincerely, Still questioning.

“Some truths don’t arrive gently. They arrive folded, stamped, and waiting at your door.”

The day the papers came, I was still trying to believe this was temporary.

I wasn’t prepared for the knock.

For the envelope.

For the way my name looked printed beside his.

Two decades of us reduced to a document I didn’t understand yet.

I remember staring at the officer, waiting for him to tell me this was a mistake.

That he had the wrong house.

The wrong woman.

The wrong story.

But he didn’t.

He handed me the papers like they were nothing more than mail.

Like they weren’t about to rewrite my entire life.

I opened them with shaking hands.

My eyes catching words I never imagined would be connected to me.

Stalking.

Fear.

Protection.

No contact.

Words that didn’t belong to my story.

Words that didn’t belong to the woman I knew myself to be.

Words that didn’t belong to the love I thought we shared.

I kept reading, but none of it made sense.

How could he be afraid of me when I was the one left in pieces?

How could he claim danger when I had spent months trying to understand why he vanished?

How could he paint me as a threat when all I had wanted was the truth?

Something inside me cracked.

Not anger.

Not yet.

Just disbelief.

A quiet, trembling disbelief that the man I loved had gone to the courts instead of coming to me.

Instead of honesty, he chose paperwork.

Instead of conversation, he chose accusation.

Instead of telling the truth, he chose a courtroom where I wasn’t allowed to speak.

I didn’t know it then, but that was the moment the story changed.

The moment the silence turned into something darker.

For twenty years I believed he loved me.

I believed he cared.

I believed he would never intentionally hurt me.

But this wasn’t confusion.

This wasn’t distance.

This wasn’t a man who needed space.

This was strategy.

This was preparation.

The first move in a game I didn’t even know I was playing.

I sat on the edge of the bed with the papers spread across my lap, reading the lines over and over, trying to find myself in them.

Trying to understand how my grief had been twisted into danger.

How my confusion had been turned into a threat.

But I couldn’t find myself anywhere in those pages.

Not the real me.

Not the mother.

Not the partner.

Not the woman who had loved him unconditionally.

All I found was the version of me he needed the world to believe.

The version that protected him from the truth.

I folded the papers slowly, my hands still trembling.

My breath is uneven.

My heart trying to understand how the man I loved had become the man who feared me on paper—but not in reality.

That was the moment the story stopped being about heartbreak.

And started becoming about survival.

I didn’t know it yet, but everything that came next, the hotel, the messages, the arrest, the charges, the jail cell, started here.

With a knock.

With an envelope.

With a silence that finally spoke.

(NEXT – CHAPTER 10)

I am driving home from the dating show right now, and I chose the girl that seemed really fun and that would match my energy even though there were a couple red flags, I ended up talking with her for a while afterwards, and there were still the red flags, but things kind of exploded when she made a particularly Jugy comment that was kind of insane. She said that if a penis is not a certain thickness honestly at that point what’s the point get rid of it and throw it away, and I’m really grateful that this is not something that I’m insecure about, but I did push back on it because I like to do this on principal, I think with penis shaving it very much is body shaving, and I’d like to stand up for it, and I’m really grateful that I’m in a position where I’m able to talk about it without taking any of it personally. When I pointed out that it was like body shaming, she started to say stuff like oh but guys make comments about women’s bodies all the time, and I mentioned that does she want to be like those guys, and she started deflecting. She kept jumping around several different things. She started getting incredibly defensive and kind of aggressive with it and at that point, I realized how there’s nothing I really want to do with this person, and so I was happy to honestly just burn the bridge and explore some conversation trees. I asked her if she felt like she was being defensive and stuff like that and she refused to acknowledge it and continue to deflect, she started to try to reflect things on me, and when I didn’t buy anything, she kept shifting what she was saying. She tried back peddling and saying that she was just making jokes, and it was dark humor, and that I was just being sensitive, and then she was saying that she was only saying that because she knew that it didn’t apply to me, and that if someone said that stuff about her, she would be completely fine about it because she knew that they were jokes, and they didn’t apply to her. And I kind of just was surprised to see that someone that has been in therapy for eight years still struggle so much with the defensiveness that comes from a person that is carrying a lot of guilt whenever they do anything bad. She very much strikes me as the kind of person who is heavily trying to be a good person, and so when they are told that they hurt someone or potentially do something wrong, they have to invalidate it to preserve their innocence. And I feel bad for her, and I hope that this is something that doesn’t stay with her forever. She talked about getting liposuction to move some of her fat to her breasts because they were small, and she talked about how she wanted to travel a ton and all the stuff even though she didn’t really have the money for it. I feel like there is so much pressure on having this picture perfect life and thinking that having money would solve her issues. I also think that she was incredibly sexual, she was grabbing my body a lot and would talk about sex things a lot, she even said at one point that sex was her special hobby. And I thought about the thing that my therapist said about how certain people go into that defense mechanism of being hypersexual in the hopes of keeping someone happy and having them want to stay with you. This whole concept of if I am this person‘s sexual fantasy, they will desperately want to stay with me as this is an additional source of, and I’m glad that my therapist pointed out because I was able to see a lot of the science this time and I think it’s kind of fascinating learning about something that you spotted almost like learning an instrument and hearing it in songs suddenly. If I think a little bit more selfishly about my own life and the lesson to learn there I think about how I was kind of sad realizing this with my therapist about how finding someone who is arguably not even sexually compatible, but rather super sexual, and wants to do the things that I would enjoy so heavily of people pleaser how that is not healthy. And I’m glad that that is independent from someone having a high sex drive and being open to trying new things and caring about a partner‘s pleasure, but I think the incredibly intense almost immediate hypersexuality and priority on being desired is kind of a recipe for disaster. And I guess I wonder if there’s a way that I can romanticize it, because maybe there is absolutely merit in a slow burn, or a gradual build of tension that comes from a place of safety not just lust. I think about the time recently where I had sex and it was pretty much everything I could ask for, the person had an incredible body, and they were heavily focused on my pleasure and pretty much a fantasy in that sense, and I still didn’t feel nearly as good as I do when I’m with someone that I love. I think that is something to really hold onto because it really is something beautiful and additionally sustainable. I wonder if I can not even just put myself in her shoes or her in a hypothetical sense, but flip the roles and stay as myself. What happens if sex with something that women heavily wanted, and it was something arguably selfish for that. Additionally, it’s something where I am kind of the one at risk and also the one in the position of power. Even if I enjoy sex if I am having sex out of this pressure or obligation to have someone continue to want me, I think all it takes is really one time for it to corrupt the act of sex as a hole. I think it immediately goes from being something that is a choice and a mutually beneficial fun trusting thing you can do with someone into a obligation and something where you are essentially forced to do it at risk of punishment or losing something. Also, something else comes to mine, I remember she asked something on stage about my attachment style and I answered that growing up I was a lot more anxiously attached but through a lot of therapy I’ve started to shift more towards secure and I would say that I’m fairly secure right now at least a theory. She told me when we started our date that she was anxiously attached, and when I mentioned that I don’t think that’s a healthy thing or a good thing, one of the big points that I point out is how it often comes at one’s own sacrifice, and once that obligation happens, it becomes a festering wound that builds up more and more resentment, and she quickly said that she is not that and she would not change who she is for anyone, and I feel like I’ve seen this several times before in similar types of people. I think there’s this stubbornness and rigidness that comes with trying to prevent people pleasing and this an anxious attachment. And I remember because I thought about this earlier with one of my coworkers that is also a friend. She is a very soft spoken woman, and I would say pretty anxious, she always lets other people talk over her in meetings and is very sheepish. I noticed that today when she was giving me feedback on my presentation with another coworker, she was being kind of aggressive with it, being very rigid and stubborn and matter of fact with her opinions, and it felt like she was trying to completely shut down an argument, like a dad saying that’s that and finishing a discussion with their son. Immediately afterwards she started apologizing saying sorry if I’m like being really aggressive this is just my opinion and she started to backpedal with that and so I started to think about why she does something like that. And my guess is as someone who is incredibly soft spoken, and this is something that inadvertently gets an advantage of, and I almost feel bad saying taking advantage of because more accurately it’s her not being willing to take up natural space in a conversation. Essentially any of the times when several people try to speak at once, she always yields, and if anyone ever tries to say anything she immediately gives the floor, and I try to make a conscious note of this and make sure that she gets to speak, but I think this honestly runs the risk of being kind of patronizing and I’m grateful that I don’t think it is, she is grateful for it as far as I understand, but I think this is something that absolutely she could benefit from working on. But either way she generally doesn’t get to Voice her opinion as much as a normal person would, and so when it’s time for her to poison opinion that she thinks is meaningful she overcompensate and ends up being incredibly argumentative or rigid and firm with her opinion. And this would work if you were averaging things out, but I don’t think this actually ends up working and rather both situations end up, not giving any fruit and I think without the insight that the answer is not Moore firmness, a natural response is to feel like you need to be even more assertive next time. But I think very much there is a sweet spot. There’s a difference between being a complete pushover and being a dictator there is no real way to have a meaningful two-way conversation or to change someone’s mind more importantly when you were either of those extremes. And so almost counterintuitively for her to have her opinion be hurt more often I think maybe the best thing to do is to be slightly more assertive in the cases where she would generally be a pushover. And instead of over, compensating by being aggressive, stay at this similar oust portion of communication. I think the same sort of needles swinging too far is something that happens with people pleasing. I think when you grow up in a way where you feel like you are responsible or you have to fight for love, you end up with this pressure and this expectation that love is not only conditional, but fairly fickle. If you are not performing at a high level, you will not receive love. And this ends up leading to people pleasing, and I know this because I grew up the exact same way, and I will caveat. I didn’t like the fact that I said I know this because all of this is fully just my opinion and I’m young I’m not clinically trained or anything like that and I’m just being an armchair psychologist to my own journal. I definitely don’t think I have all of the answers and I can be in a spot where I’m prescriptive about what other people should do with their lives. But I think when people pleasing ends up rearing, it’s ugly head and the blister pops, I think this leads to the incredible aggression that comes from feeling like you need to stand your ground and be unwavering as an over compensation to completely bending over backwards for someone else, but I think the real happy medium is somewhere in between to no one surprise. What really needs to happen is more emphasis on boundaries and preventing that self sacrifice and sabotage, and this allows you to not overcompensate and be here compromising and change for a partner in the same way that any kind of compromise affects us. If I say something that hurts someone’s feeling I want to be accountable for that and I want to have enough of a sense of self and morality where I can believe. I’m still a good person and I can make mistakes and I want to be able to address that and make the other person feel heard and understood. I think when I do not have that strong sense of self, it becomes an all or nothing situation, and it’s almost unfathomable that a good person could do something bad. I think I’m grateful for my guilt in terms of at least giving me a strong, moral compass, because I’ve seen a good amount of people online resonate with the whole idea about I want to be a good person. I think there are always situations where I think wow that is a really kind thing that I haven’t considered, and I would like to be more mindful of that or things where I can be a nicer person or a kinder person, but I’ve never really thought about myself as an unkind person. I take a lot of cried in the fact that I have the resilience in hurtful situations to take the high road because if nothing else, I can at least not feel this guilt and shame of doing something that I don’t morally like.

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To be honest, being super busy every single day really helps you to be mentally stable.

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Life is strange.

You arrive with nothing, spend your whole life chasing everything, and still leave with nothing.

Make sure your soul gains more than your hand...

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Your memory feels like home to me so whenever my mind wanders, it always find its way back to you.

— Ranata Suzuki

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I find I must say weird stuff, or I’ll die.

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So maybe tomorrow I'll find my way home I’ll look around at a beautiful life Been the upperside of down Been the inside of out But we breathe, we breathe I wanna breeze and an open mind I wanna swim in the ocean Wanna take my time for me, all me

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We are no more than the stories we tell we are told or are told about us. — Oliver Jeffers.

Take this sinking boat and point it home.

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Don’t offer a lecture to a person who needs a hug.

we breathe, we breathe I wanna breeze and an open mind I wanna swim in the ocean

I'll find my way home So maybe tomorrow

May the calm in you win over the chaos around you.

Oh! If only I could take my own advice, the giant and the success I would be.

Your body still moves. Your mind still works. Your time is still yours. Your future has not completely closed its doors.

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We become furious over losing money, but surrender entire years to distraction, indecision, resentment, and things we never truly valued.

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If everything you offer is not enough, offer your absence.

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I never lied about being in a bad place, only that I was okay.

Sometimes the things we do are just things we do. But to others, it’s their whole world in a moment.

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15 miles to the love shack.

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We cannot be 'behind' in our chase of life, for we a each only running against ourselves.

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#quotes

A few weeks ago I filled out a Canadian government survey on generative AI in the arts. (The survery is still up as of this blog post, in case any Canadian readers want to fill it out.)

The survey was hilariously biased towards AI (questions are all like “What help does your organization need in order to adopt more AI?”), and by the time I got to the free text entry questions at the end I was pretty pissed off.

But one question, in amongst a list of questions about how your organization currently uses AI, was “Does your organization have an AI policy?” I initially clicked “no” to this along with all the other questions, but later on went back and changed it to “yes”, because I do have a clear gen-AI policy, although I hadn't written it down. My policy is that I don't use it.

So for the record:

I always try to say “Generative AI” rather than just “AI” when talking about ChatGPT and similar things. “Artificial Intelligence” is a broad, decades-old academic field, and also (as in Seedship and some of my other games) a science fiction conceit about “what if a computer could think like a person?” Generative AI is a sophisticated autocomplete that uses ecologically devastating amounts of power and water to create text and images that are statistically similar to text and images in its training data, which was scraped from the internet and from pirated book archives with no regard for copyright or consent. Calling it “AI” is a way of confusing people into thinking it's like a science fiction AI, which it is not. It's very often wrong; it's been shown to cause cognitive decline in regular users; and it's being used to put people out of work by bosses who think it can do workers' jobs.

When used in creative work, gen-AI's outputs are also soulless and artistically bankrupt. Gen-AI is good at text that seems OK when you skim-read it but has no deeper meaning, and images that look OK at first glance but fall down when you look at them closely. If someone's impressed by gen-AI output then I've got to assume they've never really thought about a piece of text or looked closely at an artwork.

I've seen some people online do things like get ChatGPT to play Seedship, or having it output stories or images based on their Seedship games. And, like, I can't stop people from doing that kind of thing, but I want it on record that I would prefer they didn't.

#SpaceGoblinGames #GenAI #Seedship

The Best Brood War Unit Part 4- Best of the Best

So, it looks like in total I have identified six five star units. The Zergling, The Mutalisk, The Defiler, The Vulture, The Siege Tank and The High Templar. Some would argue others like science vessels, arbiters, lurkers, etc. Mine were heavily based on my subjective opinion after having watching pros play, so take that as you will. I don't see arbiters as often as the others, and I see a lot of science vessels get killed so it's those sorts of things that pushed those down. I'm pretty happy with this list, but if I was going to make a change I'd consider the lurker, but since Zerg already has three tier five units that seems like overkill.

To now narrow it down to the best unit I'll do a series of head to head matchups until one remains. First, the siege tank vs the vulture. Both factory units, but there may only be one. Siege tanks are incredibly impressive in terms of fire power. They literally dictate the pace of games and the shape of the battlefield. When facing off against Terran, it's the opposing players overwhelming priority to just keep that tank count down as much as possible, otherwise they will be overwhelmed. BUT, big BUT here. A vulture only costs 75 minerals. A tank costs 150 minerals and 100 gas. A vulture is super fast at scouting, does decent damage and comes with three spider mines. Just as a value buy, I think the vulture edges out the siege tank. Late game though, siege tank is the GOAT, but looking at the game in its entirety I'm leaning vulture, just by a hair.

Now lets do mutalisks vs zerglings. Mutalisks are a nightmare in the hands of a player with strong micro. Their ability to maneuver, harass, glaive ricochet, etc makes them an exceptional choice against all three races. Zerg vs Zerg boils down to muta fights many times. Zerg vs Terran ends early if the Terran can't keep the mutalisks at bay. And in Zerg vs Protoss mutalisks are great for sniping high templar and other high value units. But, mutalisks have some major weaknesses. Corsairs, valkyries, psionic storm, etc. Also missile turrets are dirt cheap and can zone them out pretty well. Zerglings on the other hand are so cheap that anything that counters them doesn't really hard counter them because you can just make more. And zerglings scale better. Even in the extreme late game, zerglings are still incredibly dangerous, vs at that point mutalisks are more reserved for hunting down specific units, stopping dropships or just for suprise changes. Zerglings win.

Now lets do zerglings vs vultures. Vultures are incredible, but for the price of one you get three zerglings. I'd rather face a vulture and three spidermines than three cracklings any day. Vultures can't level your base in seconds. A group of cracklings absolutely can. Vultures deal concussive damage. Spider mines need to be triggered. Zerglings just need to... zergling. Zerglings win.

Now lets do defilers vs high templar. My initial gut instinct here is to go defiler. As mentioned before, dark swarm is straight up busted. That combined with consume giving limitless energy and plague also being an incredibly potent ability, they are power houses. However, defilers are a late game unit. High templar on the other hand, have utility earlier in the game. Their storms can kill, whereas plague can only get you down to one health. Also, when they are out of energy, they can merge into a heavy combat unit and keep fighting. I'm going to actually go out on a limb here and say high templar edge out defilers. Controversial, sure, but zerg could survive without defliers. I don't think protoss could survive without high templar, unless they were godly good with reavers. So basically Snow, that's it.

Now the finale, zerglings vs high templar. High templar have something zerglins do not, splash damage. Psionic storm can wipe out an entire army. A fully charged high templar can cast three storms, each dealing up to 112 damage. So lets say a storm captures 15 units. Thats 3 x 15 x 112 = 5040 damage. Now that is assuming incredibly accurate storms, so we will say 5000 is an upper limit. Many storms are whiffed, many high templar sniped. Most don't reach full energy before they need to engage. But still, extremely optimistic scenario. A high templar costs 200 resources. A zergling costs 25 resources. Fully upgraded, I think a zergling has a DPS of roughly 32. So 8 zerglings deal 256 damage per second. In 20 seconds they've greatly eclipsed the high templar. And that 5000 figure was wildly optimistic. This whole argument is a false equivalency I'm realizing. At the end of the day the high templar is a glass cannon caster that can be neutralized, vs zerglings are an endless swarm of dps machines. Zerglings can't attack up, but storms can be dodged and don't damage buildings. I'm leaning zergling here.

So zerglings, the cheapest unit in the game, are also the best. This mimics modern developments in warfare, where cheap drones are proving tactically and strategically superior to very expensive legacy weapon systems in many situations.

So there it is, the zergling is the best unit in the game.