Rifling Through the DUMP

Into da mind of da maniac

I've been using the Notes app a lot lately. I've written every one of these Substack posts on the Notes app, which I then copy-paste into Google Docs, which I then proofread and format, which I then copy-paste into Substack where I re-format and add images and post. It sounds very roundabout when I write it out like that but it's a process that works for me. When I try to write in the Google Docs app on my phone I simply cannot get words out and the app is clunky anyway. But anyway, I have a Notes app file which I have entitled "DUMP" where I toss random thoughts that pop into my head to revisit later. This post is the revisiting. I'm going to go through every entry and write/expound upon each interspersed with pictures I’ve taken on disposable cameras this summer.

"if not an upper echelon restaurant, an establishment with that kind of vocabulary"

I was walking in Northwest Portland and I passed a restaurant which I described as such. It was completely empty on a Tuesday evening around 7pm—the time you'd expect it to be busiest. Empty restaurants bum me out in the most mild sense of the word. It sucks to think about someone's dream failing very publicly and expensively. Sure, the person who owns/runs the place is statistically likely to be a freak/tyrant/abuser but I am trying not to make snap judgements on some nebulous imagined idea of people I will never know anything about. So I felt sad for that person and the people who work there who will likely have to look for somewhere else to be exploited in the near future. 

"every time they say the boys are back in town 

26 by my count"

I heard the song "The Boys Are Back In Town" at a bar about a month ago and wanted to know how many times they said the exact phrase "the boys are back in town" in the song. The answer, by my manual count, is 26. I have not verified this with any governing board and will accept this as fact until I see very conclusive proof to the opposite.

"70 degrees with a breeze"

I wrote this while walking home from a date. It was 70 degrees with a breeze outside. It was a very lovely nighttime temperature and breeze amount. 

"trucks aren't so turquoise anymore"

I saw an old turquoise truck and thought about how the trucks these days aren't all that turquoise. Turquoise is a great color and an absurd thing to see spelled out in front of you four times in quick succession.

"the cars - self titled"

What a phenomenal debut album. Those first three tracks are pure Golden. People always say stuff about how the aliens must've helped the Egyptians build the pyramids which I think is a misapplied example and indictment of people's capacity to dream. I think it's more likely that aliens helped these boys from Boston open their debut album with three of the best pop songs ever written. It truly is insane that they did this. 

"wednesday band - james harden flow"

I like the band Wednesday's album Ray Saw God. I believe I've mentioned that on here before. Highly recommend giving that a couple spins. Lead singer Karly Hartzman sings the way James Harden plays basketball. Unique in a technical sense, she darts around in ways that sound equal parts  quick and lazy. It's fun to listen to.

"oppenheimer becomes simultaneously more and less fascinating if read as an autobiography, guilty for spawning the superhero genre 

batman did a surveillance state"

I like the idea of Christopher Nolan seeing himself in Robert Oppenheimer. It's a funny thought to imagine him thinking; comparing the guilt of having spawned the Superhero Movies Are the Only Movies to that of making the atomic bomb would be a cool thing for a director to think. I haven't read any interviews of Nolan talking about the movie so I don't know if this hypothesis has been addressed in the public square but I think it adds a layer to a movie I found quite fascinating. I've seen it in theaters three times, which I have not done since Finding Nemo. Everyone I knew was going to see Finding Nemo for their birthday that summer; I probably saw it six times in theaters. We were kids. The "discourse" in the lead-up to Oppenheimer was pretty annoying as is any discourse in anticipation of a major cultural event. People were genuinely concerned that the movie was going to be Pro Bomb because Batman was doing surveillance state stuff in The Dark Knight. People are stupid in new and exciting ways every day. This pre-film criticism is especially funny after seeing the movie, whose final scene is Robert Oppenheimer looking directly into the camera saying "we destroyed the world" as Nolan cuts between images of the Earth being completely incinerated and Oppenheimer's horrified face. People still didn't think Nolan was explicit enough in saying that dropping atomic bombs on innocent people was bad, somehow. 

"nature bats last"

I read this somewhere I don't remember where or why it resonated with me or what I wanted to say about it.

"baseball is a semi-self contained environment and ecosystem in the macro, micro, and meta"

I was going to use this in the piece I wrote about the MLB trade deadline but I forgot to include it. One of the reasons I like MLB is that it is a semi-self contained blah blah blah and it is like observing a different world. 

"you'll never be less tired than you are today"

This is something my mom said to my aunt and uncle that I thought was cool and a nice little motto to live by.

"But Doctor, I Am the 2023 San Diego Padres"

Don't remember writing this and it doesn't even make sense because a doctor would never tell you to watch the 2023 San Diego Padres. Textbook case of malpractice and they would lose their license. 

"visceral and ethereal. concrete and nebulous"

Don't know what this was in reference to but sounds like something pretty cool!

"conceptual and aesthetic influence for 45:33"

Thought about writing at length about Manuel Gottsching's album E2-E4 but don't feel like doing that at the moment. It is a great album and I highly recommend checking it out. He did it all in one take and reader, it simply goes. 

"I Want to Walk Around With You"

Line from an Animal Collective song that would work well as the title to a cheesy love letter some day in the future.

"i like having an avenue on which to unnecessarily and maybe even incorrectly use the word "erudite""

Everything is addressed in the note above.

"Hyper-parasocialization"

An annoying hyphenate I thought of yesterday to describe the insane effects that Taylor Swift is having on people's brains. The Taylor Swift phenomenon is very fascinating to me and it seems to me that she somehow doubled in popularity in the past three years which feels simultaneously impossible and undeniably true. I cannot remember anything like the Eras Tour in my life. If you are a Taylor Swift fan and especially if you've gone to the Eras Tour I would like to talk to you about it. Comment, DM, text, call, please reach out. 

"guy trying to put the gas pump in his ass and his friends grabbing him away"

Saw this walking home from the club last night. Dude was fifty shades of fucked up and drunkenly tried to stick a gas pump up his ass. Made me laugh a lot. The life had left his eyes hours ago.

"old woman on the train with anxiety medication who kept trying to talk to me"

I took the train up to Seattle on Wednesday to watch my favorite baseball team get humiliated. The woman sitting next to me started getting very anxious about halfway through the trip and started talking to me. She was very unfocused in her line of questioning but it was nice to have a sort of conversation with a stranger. I think that is absolutely dying out which is a bummer but I am not going to be the change I wish to see in the world. I keep to myself on public transportation; headphone hours. 

"down syndrome guy on train that everybody hated"

So obviously that's an upsetting sentence to read and let me tell you some more about it. There was a man with down syndrome sitting behind me on the train ride back to Portland on Thursday. He would flag down the conductor every time the conductor walked through the cabin to ask him some questions about our journey's progress. He also made a couple phone calls during our four hour ride. He spoke at a pretty high volume and would take a while to get through sentences. Harmless, obviously. He was just living his life. When he got off the train at the Vancouver stop everybody else on the train started bitching and moaning about how annoying they thought he was. This was completely insane to me! I've never heard so many people instantly start talking shit on a total stranger like that, let alone a person with Down Syndrome. I could not believe it. Those people were incredibly cruel. They also complained about how the train was 30 minutes late to Portland. All of these people were in their 50s or older but supposedly millennials and Gen-Z are the reason things are bad now. 

"weyes blood induces a quasi-weightlessness. feel four inches off the ground"

I've been listening to her album from last year And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow a lot lately. I just started listening to it as I typed the last sentence, serendipitously. I just had to google serendipitously because I realized I had absolutely no idea how to spell it. I got to "ser" and just froze. Couldn't even guess my next step. Anyway this album is absolutely beautiful and I was listening to it last night when I was walking home from the club. I believe the crescendo of "It's Not Just Me, It's Everybody" was playing when the guy tried to shove the gas pump up his ass but I can't recall. I mostly remember the guy with the lifeless eyes blankly trying to put unleaded gasoline into his asshole.