Life Log

It's been a while, and life has been chaotic. Interesting, but chaotic. Perhaps the oddest thing involved an email from a man who came across and old piece of writing of mine. Back in 2014, I wrote an essay for my friend's website about a strange night out in 2007 or 2008 while I was out drinking with friends. Two men came into our bar and proceeded to perform for the entire bar. I bought a CD-R for $5, though money was not requested for it. Turns out one of the men, the tuba player, I believe, found it and reached out. Sadly, the guy swamped me with emails, so I've largely ignored him since my response, but I'm glad he found the essay anyway. (By the way, the music on that CD-R is included as MP3 links in the essay. It's good stuff, and I still have the CD.)

Last week, I came across two high quality vinyl stickers trying to recruit for ICE stuck up in my neighborhood using Nazi imagery and language. There was a photo of a man doing a Nazi salute with the text "PROTECT THE HOMELAND" and blurbs about how awful migrants are, and I ripped those fucking things down on sight. I shared the news with the neighborhood Discord and Subreddit (yes, we have both), and contacted my local elected officials. I was just so... shocked. This is New York City, this is Queens, this is a diverse neighborhood with some mild conservative leanings, but Nazi shit? That's frightening, especially with the quality of the stickers. There's a chapter of the JDL, a Zionist far-right hate group (as per the SPLC) that loves to sticker the neighborhood, but that's clearly all stuff coming out of some guy's laser printer. Professionally printed vinyl stickers are another matter entirely.

This may have been a little bit of why, when I went to early vote on Saturday (for Zohran Mamdani, of course), I was a bit too willing to get into it with a Cuomo canvasser. After I corrected her lie about Cuomo covering up the death of 20,000 seniors from COVID for an old lady, I mentioned "This homo didn't vote for Cuomo." (For those not in the know, back in the 70s Andrew Cuomo came up with the slogan "Vote for Cuomo, Not the Homo" when his father ran against Ed Koch — and lost.) The Cuomo canvasser had the sheer chutzpah to claim that Zohran Mamdani was going to throw all the queers into jail because he's Ugandan, and the Ugandan government is anti-LGBTQ. She got an earful. Zohran Mamdani is the only candidate with an LGTBQ platform, who reached out directly to the trans community, and even joined the Queer Liberation March during Pride Weekend.

There was also another curious dream... Details behind the cut.

( A Curious Dream )

On the job front, The Met turned me down for reasons I cannot possibly fathom. Fortunately, I have more interviews lined up. Tomorrow, I'm interviewing with a healthcare company, and speaking with a recruiter about a contract role. Friday, I'm interviewing with the hiring manager for a role with a very old and well-established company that would involve occasional travel to one of my favorite places in the world: Finland. I'm especially excited by that possibility.

Finally, the biggest thing is that I finally finished, revised, and formatted my essay on nostalgia, fascism, and AI slop: "Synthetic Ghosts of a Past that Never Was". I posted it earlier today, and spent much of the afternoon catching all the fucking typos I missed in the editing passes. It's had a good reception so far, and I'm very proud of it. This is actually the first piece of long-form essay writing I've posted online since 2017, not counting the coming out post I made on my blog back in 2021. It feels good to put something long form out in the world, and to do it in a way that feels more human than just throwing shit onto a Substack or whatever the hell people are doing these days.