Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 38

Of Memories in Grey Plastic

Among the boxes pulled from the soon-to-be-vacated cabin in the woods (three weeks), those vehicles of deliverance from the boredom of heartlandic, pre-internet, only-child youth: the NES and its accompanying plastic worlds, worlds where glitches and stops and starts could be fixed with the magic of wasted breath; oh, if only it were all that easy.

Nevermind that the controllers are, a decade-hence, still missing – as is the best in the Mario series, SUPER MARIO BROS.2; I’ve got the memories...

(LinkExhaust) 30jul2019

Highlights from my public Pinboard:

“This is a president who will happily debase himself at the slightest provocation. And given Mr. Cummings’ criticisms of U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has launched as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his willingness to call Mr. Trump a racist for his recent attacks on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that “Fox & Friends” had recently aired a segment critical of the city, slamming Baltimore must have been irresistible in...

Of Propulsion and Punctuation

From Ursula K. Le Guin, in STEERING THE CRAFT:

“…punctuation tells the reader how to hear your writing. That’s what it’s for. Commas and periods bring out the grammatical structure of a sentence; they make it clear to the understanding, and the emotions, by showing what it sounds like – where the breaks come, where to pause. If you read music, you know that rests are signs for silence. Punctuation marks serve very much the same purpose.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, STEERING THE CRAFT, pp.11-12.

I act...

(Reading) 29jul2019

“While science fiction thrillers are drawn to dramatic apocalypses of fire and smoke, in reality we might be facing a banal apocalypse by clicking.”

Yuval Noah Harari, 21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, p. 71.

We Interrupt This Sanctioned Disruption…

The dog-children bark at some unseen and possibly non-existent disruption in their backyard sanctuary: another week has begun, same as the last week.

A back and forth on morning discipline: do I allow myself a connection to the online (news, etc. – but only in non-working moments) or do I abstain, allowing only certain, quasi-essential connections – posting these rambles, music streaming, a brief, post-breakfast glance at Dark Sky to ascertain the oven temperature of this Ohio summer and its...

(Currently) 28jul2019

Reading : 21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, by Yuval Noah Harari (43/372).Listening: FEVER TO TELL, by Yeah Yeah Yeahs; RAW, by Typh Barrow; COLD HEART, by Michael Kiwanuka; ON THE LINE, by Jenny Lewis; SEX, by The Necks; TOTAL DEPRAVITY, by The Veils. Watching: DEADWOOD, Season One (4/12); BARRY, Season Two (5/8) Playing: MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR.

Newsletter 0060 is in the wild; regular ramblings return tomorrow. Also, I’m slowly finding my way to sharing worthwhile links again: you can...

(DogPicture) 27jul2019

Slow(:) Writer at Play

I’ve written before of my efforts to introduce a certain controlled friction into The Work so that I might give myself permission to slow down – tiny screen, fountain pen, paper, etc – but now, the introduction of a necessary friction into my online existence.

That’s really the purpose of these pieces, of shifting the whole of my online existence into this space: a desire to slow down, to process, to consider, to prioritize choice – think things through, offer thoughtful commentary, make my...

Drain-Refuel / Refuel-Drain (?)

Ongoing discovery, rediscovered, daily, Columbus “discovering” America: while I will fill a notebook with illegible scrawl – exorcisms – during the morning’s writing hours, I rarely open the thing in the afternoon and evening: there are no ideas itching to leap from brain to page, no moments of inspiration that solve the morning’s unsolvables.

I tell myself that it’s because, by the time the afternoon rolls around, I’ve tapped the well – reduced it to little more than a trickle – and that the...

Thanks for the Memories I Don’t Remember

Spent much of Tuesday prone under the eaves of the soon-to-be-vacated cabin in the woods, pulling boxes of my past, of memories that I’d forgotten I’d had, towards their final vanishing.

(More than) slightly disturbing to find those memories that I forget, that life before, that childhood – though I barely recognize the tiny stranger (with a chainsaw in one, so pretty accurate) pictured as anything but separate from myself – tucked away and keeping the mouse shit company; perhaps it’s a life...