the philosopher king

rats, according to nobel prize winner daniel kahnemann, will pleasure themselves to death by starvation when hooked up the a machine in which they control the pleasure centers in their own brains. humans, it seems by analogy, are no different. this is why i have chosen the attitude in life that i have chosen. call it pragmatism if you’d like. it’s similar to psychopathy and sociopathy in a sense but instead of being inherent it’s tightly controlled. i am fundamentally an emotional person. i have spent the entirety of my adult life becoming an emotionally controlled person and i have become quite good at it. there are moments when i swipe at people like a cat or well up with sadness, but they are far and few between. i have observed that people tend to perceive me as a either this or that depending on which persona i present to them and often they are shocked when they discover that the two personas are radically different. at work i tend to be perceived as a robot — unfriendly yet productive. in my social life, which is slowly becoming as controlled as my emotions (on unrelated but comparable intensity scales), i appear a bit wild and rowdy. how to compare these two personas? i am one of the few people on earth who can distinguish them in myself. rarely do the multiplicities of personas meet in public spaces. the truth is that I have not allowed myself to be the rat. through self-discipline and sheer force of will, i attenuate my continual pleasure – the same continual pleasure that most people are afforded this day in age and the same continual pleasure they engage in until they kill themselves inadvertently. i choose when to be happy and when to be sad. i often blame it on autism spectrum disorder and it may well be that. yet somehow i am a successful person with high ethical standards and likewise i am neither a psychopath nor a sociopath. 

can’t really sleep. kinda zonked out around 9 and then woke up around 12:30. thoughts running through my head. worried about work. it feels like some days they love me and other days they barely tolerate me. how can that be? people quit from there too often. there are many gripes but one gripe is that it’s too corporate. i don’t feel that way. mostly I think people just don’t do their jobs. ideas are clouds. processes are work. these people want to imagine themselves doing their jobs and hope and pray that their jobs get done somehow. magical thinking. but i can’t say these things to them because these people are both low level and high level. as for me, i generally don’t let it bother me but for some reason this morning i am bothered. that’s why i  am running a bath and hoping that it will soothe my mind for a while so that i can fal back to sleep. 

werner herzog gave me an idea. he postulates that the human soul was born in a cave in france where the oldest paintings in the world exist: 32000 years old. so what is this spirit? as an atheist I do wonder why 99% of humans feel it – an externality of life. is it there? is it an illusion? is it the microbiome in our guts talking to us? is it gone? did it get us started and now that we are sparked we can create our own spirits? is it just a memory? 

i’m taking all kinds of supplements, all for heart health, energy and cognition. what am i taking? wow the list. l-methylfolate, b-12 (methycobalamin), glisodin, coq10, alpha lipoic acid (ALA), acetyl l-carnitine, and a massive amount of omega-3 fatty acids called EPA and DHA (fish oil). whenever i need it, i also supplement with potassium, vitamin c, magnesium and calcium. i also supplement with caffeine and possible creatine on lifting days. i feel great. so far i’m down 16 pounds. i plan to get down 60 pounds from 240 to about 180 and then build it all back up as muscle. i’ll be 240 again someday and then maybe you’ll see me in giants live. 

i don’t read the news anymore but sometimes i see headlines on various websites i visit. i don’t read the articles of course but i have to wonder if it’s real or fake. i used to think i had a good grasp on what is biased and what is not biased, but i’ve backed off that to test the hypothesis more thoroughly. did a chunk of sea ice the size of india melt or is that some kind of fake article being pushed by some agenda? i may never know. i guess part of the prize of giving up the news is that i don’t know what will kill me or the planet. i hope you fuckers don’t kill the planet. 

i used my selfie-stick/tripod to take some pictures of my body. i took about 100 and pared it down to maybe 30. i like about 5 of them and the rest are motivating me to hit the gym and fast assiduously today. while it’s true that i’ve lost about 15 pounds — give or take depending on the lies the scale wishes to tell — i have a goal of 6 pounds per month. the fasting and the dietary supppements should give me the energy i need to get back to my bodybuilding goals that i set for myself about 5 years ago. october 2016 was my mark. october 2021 is my goal. 

jeans. came to the gym and forgot my gym shorts. this is a city gym, mind. wore my jeans. asshat immediately stops me and says i’m not wearing the proper attire. i looked down and said, "you’re wearing jeans" and he says "i work here" i say "as a personal trainer. shame on you for working in a gym and holding yourself to a higher standard" he says "it’s okay this time" i say "no shit, sherlock." 

please mithras, command one of your minions to dub russell crowe’s voice with a good singer’s voice — and re-release it! we loved him in gladiator but he literally ruined les miserables! 

every once in a while, hollywood shocks me. newt scamader is a man who nobody really likes and who people find annoying. he’s not sexy, he’s shy, he’s awkward, he’s not muscular, he’s not good looking, he mumbles and he’s not eloquent. yet he is a very capable protagonist. that’s a beautiful fact of life that we need to be reminded of now and then. oh, and his sidekicks are a fat guy and a misfit. wonderful! 

concoquo is a latin word meaning something literal like cook together. it comes from cum+coquo. we get our english word cook from coquo, which could have either come directly through vulgar latin during the roman occupation of england or via a dialect of anglo-norman (french). the cum prefix gets assimilated to con- which gives us the form concoct we see today from the perfect passive participle concoctus. in a more metaphorical sense it means to consider well.