Transcription is calming as well

Listening to: Paramore, Rush

Finalement! Une chanson Paramore en français! Je ne vais pas me prononcer sur la prononciation (même si c'est ma première réaction dont je veux parler), parce-que sinon j'ouvre la porte à être critiqué pour mon écriture française, qui est effectivement en péril.

Writer's pivot to Tupac

I like writing about writing. I find it calming, and so I do it often on here.

But what about singing about writing? Or rapping about it?

I don't consider myself a good singer nor rapper (although I've attempted to "remix" lyrics and written/performed original slam poetry before), but I have a good amount of reverence for those that do. Whether someone is or isn't actually isn't all that important in my eyes: it's the drive to be good at the artform that matters. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch: if your music sucks, I probably won't listen to it but you won't catch me trying to dissuade you from making it. One likes to believe in the freedom of music, after all.

-

I want to pivot away from my Paramore fanaticism, at least for this post, and talk about 2Pac.

I should mention I'm not a diehard fan or anything. As it happens I've played artists like Eminem, 50 Cent, Kanye and the like a lot more over the course of my life; but I'm familiar enough with his music and his legacy. I only got into his music in my mid-twenties, though I was first exposed to him in middle school when there was a whole group of kids in my grade who were big fans, somehow. I've never even been to the States but I believe that his music transcends geographical borders and cultures. His uplifting of African-american subculture through art is truly inspiring, and it makes sense that a bunch of Canadian school kids would be into his music given the relatively barren Canadian Hip-Hop/Rap scene at the time.

He actually made a lot of music. When I downloaded his discography a few years back, there were so many albums! The sheer number rivalled the Pink Floyd and the Rush in my iTunes library. I don't really know what his biggest/most popular hits are other than maybe California Love. Often I'll find myself listening to a 2Pac song I've never heard before and thinking: "Wow, this is a killer beat!" and then I listen to the lyrics and I'm like: "Shit, these lyrics are lit!" and thus I slowly but surely get more familiar with his works.

-

My favourite song currently is Ambitionz As A Ridah. 

Given the title of this post, can you guess the reason why?

...

...

...

Yeah, I've got ambitions as a writer, how could you tell?

Okay, so Tupac might not have been rapping about writing per se, but it's a hella catchy song nonetheless:

I won't deny it, I'm a straight ridah
You don't wanna fuck with me
Got the police bustin' at me
But they can't do nothin' to a G

Here, I'll embarrass myself with my censored "whiteboi" interpretation:

If I'm a straight writer - which I usually am -
then you don't wanna mess with me
Got the grammer police all riled up
But they can't do nothin' to a G

Till the next blog post,

Gabe out.

A community of netizens

I think I've finally found something I've been searching for since the very start of kaleidoughscope: a community of bloggers.

It's not just bloggers that are part of this online community that I'm about to speak on. There's programmers and writers and system administrators and webmasters and students and scientists and many more of course, and most of them don't identify as bloggers like I am wont to do, but many of them maintain blogs on personal websites. And they publish at least somewhat regularly. Sure, some might have published but a few posts here and there over a couple years' time, and these places are like singular time capsules into the lives of people I've never met and interest me in and of themselves. But there are others who have decades of writing laid bare, kinda like here, and these make for engaging archive perusal by me. Both these kinds of people are bloggers in my eyes.

So I've uncovered a veritable trove of websites published by people who appreciate the internet for what it once was and what it can be: not corporate and "FAANG"-owned. Many of these folks have meticulously crafted and maintain their own personal websites, using free and open-source tools, and made the decision to not rely on the big guys like Amazon and Google. It's really inspiring, and something I aspire to do one day with this blog (Blogger started out independent but was bought by Google back in 2003).

I check in here and there on the Discord server that, to me, serves as a meeting place for this community: The 32-Bit Cafe. Like many cool things I've discovered online, I stumbled on it purely by chance (using a discovery engine like StumbleUpon - CloudHiker it's now called). The people that make up this loose community are from all over the world, and are of different ages and genders, and are from different socioeconomic backgrounds; they are, like me, global netizens. The "tech-saviness" floating around this server is impressive: I constantly find myself "knowingly" nodding along to conversations about some obscure computer protocol until I realize I don't actually know what they're talking about, like, at all. But, that makes me appreciate the discussion even more, and lights up my curiosity!

But what's the primary reason I'm so excited about having discovered this community?

Because blogging/writing is lonely as hell, man. But seeing others who write about their lonely or not-so-lonely hells ultimately encourages me to write more. It reminds me that it's possible to be lonely - together.

That's right: it wouldn't be a classic kaleidoughscope post if I didn't manage to sneak in a Paramore reference. The worst part is, I've already written extensively about this song in a previous post a decade ago. My updated take on it is that it's a song about writing and writers. That's how I now choose to interpret it and the beauty of music is that you can do that.

Anyway, here's that "lonely" Paramore song, Be Alone:

Bullets & the farm

Bullet points I should say; not actual bullets.

• I went to Riverdale Farm on a whim yesterday afternoon after I finished busywork at college
• I've never seen Riverdale Farm so empty! There were a few poncho-clad farmhands doing chores, but otherwise I only encountered two other people: a young couple, who entered the building I was eating my lunch in whilst sheltering from the rain
  
• I spent some time alone (on a farm! in the middle of the biggest city in Canada!) at various moments in time yesterday, with two cows, two horses, two sheep (with one of them nurturing two adorable black lambs), two rabbits, and a whole bunch of local birds (feasting on the abundance of animal feed inside the barns) to keep me company on a rainy outing
  
• The spare pair of socks I'd been keeping in my backpack for months (I had to work a shift once with soaked feet; never again!) finally came in clutch, as the rain had been persistently dribbling down my shoes all day. Let me tell you, the feeling of taking off slimy, wet socks and putting on crisp, dry ones is a small but divine experience
  
• I need to go back to Riverdale Farm in the middle of a grey spring day. The empty, forlorn but not desolate energies in the moment provided me with ethereal feelings of groundedness that I will no doubt try to replicate at home but something, something will always be missing
  
• When I found myself roughly in the middle of the estate, I stared at two cows from behind two layers of iron fence separating human and beast. As I approached, one of the cows, bigger than the other, made a move to come closer to me, curiosity evident in its big brown eyes; but the draw of the hay trough was greater, and besides, a big puddle of mud between the fence and Big Bertha (what else to call a big cow?) discouraged an approach. As I continued my silent staring, I internally thanked Big Bertha for nourishing me. I know that that specific cow had not fed me, as it was obviously still alive, but I was directly thanking the species using telepathic thoughts of gratitude. I mean, sure, I could have made a donation to Riverdale Farm and that might have been a slightly more effective gesture for the cow, but actually, I think that expressing gratitude for the food supply is important and that we are too disconnected from the food chain in the big city
  
• You see, I eat Ontario beef via the CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) that my housemates and I support. It ends up being way cheaper than buying weekly at the supermarket, plus the beef is grass-fed and thus far superior nutritionally, and I reconnect more directly to the food chain. CSAs are good, people, look into it!
  
• Although I have never truly considered myself a vegetarian, I grew up with vegetarian values and it pains me greatly that Ontario/Canada still hasn't gotten rid of feedlots and intensive farming, at the very least, and that animal welfare is still a critical issue in this modern day & age
• So going back to me thanking the cow: I'm acknowledging that I understand that I live because animals like this cow die to feed people like me and that is a hell of a privilege to have as a Homo sapiens
  
• Humanism and animal husbandry thus go hand & hand -> perhaps more on this topic in a future blog post
  

I think the gratitude journal thing I started taking seriously a couple years ago is effectively seeping into other aspects of my life. I think it was supposed to, and I'm happier for it.

Moo.

ChatGPT consulted for factual info about three cow types: Jersey, Guernsey and Holstein. I think the cows I saw might have been Jersey cows but I'm not sure.

Eclipse

I just have to write a post today. Not only because I studied astronomy in university, but like my dad told me, this eclipse thing sounds a lot like the Y2K bug back in December 1999. Everyone's talking about the eclipse, offline and online; some people even have a spiritual connection to it, like I wish I did (but I'm not going to convert to a different spiritual paradigm just to celebrate something that happens once in a while in a lifetime. No, I'm happy enough with my loose following of Taoism.) Some people have missed having science in their life and the fact that we as a species can predict and observe astronomical phenomena stirs us to appreciate it and buy glasses and make boxes to safely see what the sun & moon are up to.

Anyway, I'm kind of all over the place (nothing new), but hark; why will you say that I suffer from ADHD? No no I don't have that, I have PTSD. Oh, they're both not fun. Oh, self-diagnosis isn't allowed? Too bad. My labels, my rules.

Back on topic: the total solar eclipse. Well, it's not quite total here where I am in the Centre of the Universe, but close enough. It's overcast outside right now. It'll probably be overcast at 3pm or so as well, which means the reflector box I built won't be very useful at all. Still, I had fun building it with my mom.

What music will I be listening to? Probably none, although I desperately want to be high as fk and listening to Dark Side of the Moon because that seems like the stoner thing to do. Y'know, the pothead label is growing on me. Tree hugger, too.

Oh. Oh am I ever glad I don't have work today. In fact I am extremely grateful. I'll get some cooking done, some meditation, maybe a little reorganizing done, and I can start procrastinating preparing for my entrance exam. 

Yes, I'm going back to school! It's almost guaranteed. I just have to write this entrance application in a few days and I would start in May. I actually like summer school! I haven't been this excited about school in a long, long time.

Best of all: I won't be putting myself into further debt. I'm participating in a fully-funded program for Ontario residents. Hell to the yes.

I'll leave you with an obvious Song of the Day, dear reader: