What Is It About Laying On The Floor When You're Overwhelmed That Makes Everything Feel So Much Better?

something holy inside you wants to get out but you can’t let it

I was debating pre- and post- smartphone existentialism with an older gentleman today and he stopped part way through and said “Why are you a security guard? Why aren’t you teaching this at some college somewhere?” And I didn’t know what to say so I went with “Well I used to make art but nobody pays an artist”

Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"

We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines

shoutout to the Wednesday show writers for giving all the female characters complex personalities connections and motivations and then making the two main guys cardboard cutouts who only exist to advance the plot. This is modern feminism.

What if there was an apocalypse but some people were really really in denial and optimistic and thinking everything will be back to normal soon?

Like they’d be foraging through the ruins of New York for supplies, shooting raiders in the face and saying “Man, this recession is really bad, huh?”

tongue. if u put them on ur tongue.

Little boy standing in the stroller just looked around the crowded coffee shop, pointed at me and asked his mom "What's HIS name" and his mom said "I don't know!" and he asked me "What's YOUR name" and I called back "I'm Al" across the whole coffee shop and he went "HI AL!"