Solo week of daddy duty has ended which means I must make it a point to make this week a week of much work as well as much socializing, as I am somewhat deprived of both. Have yet to make much of a plan for the latter, but I've got my work cut out for me on the former.

Branding and logo design tends to come easy to me, a consequence of cutting my teeth on that sort of thing throughout my twenties, but I am presently wrestling with a logo for something only because it's the type of thing that lends itself so easily to cliche, and you don't want a terribly cliche logo, as that defies the chief objective of branding to begin with.

Hoping to wrap that up today and still have time to squeeze in some TSG despite it already being close to 2:00 pm.

Cloudy with bouts of rain today. Hot and humid as fuck though. Inbox 115, RSS 605.

#journal

These days I start my morning at around 7am by reading a passage or two from Yevgeny Zamyatin's WE and Mason Currey's DAILY RITUALS along with my first Americano. Then breakfast: scrambled eggs and homemade pita followed by a small bowl of granola and fresh fruit along with my second Americano.

After a bit of tidying up in the kitchen and a scolding hot shower, I get to work, typically by 9am: Mostly the very last installment of THE SOLAR GRID right now along with whatever work-for-hire I have on my plate: presently a branding gig and an illustration thing. I break for exercise around 1:00pm. Protein shake at 2:00, which I enjoy with some more light reading. Back to work by 2:30 for a final hour or two before I start cooking dinner, which if I'm low on supplies can sometimes be preceded by a quick grocery run. I'm on solo daddy duty for a good stretch which takes up most of my evenings. Not sure if I'll have enough time to squeeze in the next newsletter, but I'll try.

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Woke up today comforted by the knowledge that I will no longer be pestered by rich politicians to give them my money.

I have been on a roll of not-so-great reads lately for some reason, a couple of which I reviewed:

• THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus

• THE SEAMSTRESS AND THE WIND by Cesar Aira

George Bataille's STORY OF THE EYE and Nathanael West's MISS LONELYHEARTS/THE DAY OF THE LOCUST are a couple others, yet to be reviewed. I'm annoyed at this bad book spell I seem to have fallen under, and am wondering how these books ever landed in my TBR pile to begin with. Moving onto WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin and keeping my fingers crossed that this'll be the one to break the spell.

#journal #reads

Finally scheduled the new newsletter. This one took a lot out of me.

It goes out in a few hours. Sign up, as always, is at Ganzeer.com/Newsletter

Inbox 237, RSS 438. Terrible.

#Journal

“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” said the Earth followed by a sinister laugh.

She was bruised and visibly ill, but still stood tall. She wasn't proud of this, not really. She'd held back doing anything like it for a long time, but she was at her wit's end and found no other way.

She shook her head and retreated into the embrace of the universe, muttering no more than two words: “Puny humans.”

(Uncredited photo from Valencia following unprecedented floods.)

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• Space Exploration Logo Archive

• The Philip K. Dick Society Pamphlets

• On Charles Dickens' Unfinished Murder Mystery – “Since shortly after Dickens’s death in 1870, writers (and musical theater playwrights) have attempted to pick up where he left off, trying to solve the novel’s central murder themselves and write an acceptable second half and ending. The strangest, though, was published in 1873, by an American printer named Thomas Power James. He claimed that the spirit of Charles Dickens had appeared to him and dictated the rest of the novel through him, and published a full version of the novel. Arthur Conan Doyle, noted spiritualist, found credence in this, and endorsed this “ghostwritten” continuation, saying that Dickens’s style remained consistent throughout the story. This edition endured in America far longer than it should have.”

• Lily Allen says she earns more money from selling feet pictures than Spotify streams – “Imagine being an artist and having nearly 8 million monthly listeners on spotify but earning more money from having 1000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet. don’t hate the player, hate the game”.

Inbox 192, RSS 310. Had intended on firing up the newsletter this weekend, but a migraine got the better of me yesterday.

#radar #journal

“I gently sucked Simone's breast while waiting for the soft-boiled eggs, and she ran her fingers through my hair. Her mother was the one who brought us the eggs, but I didn't even turn around, I assumed it was a maid, and I kept on sucking the breast contentedly. Nor was I ultimately disturbed when I recognized the voice, but since she remained and I couldn't pass up even one instant of my pleasure, I thought of pulling down my pants as for a call of nature, not ostentatiously, but merely hoping she would leave and delighted at going beyond all limits.”

I knew Georges Bataille's STORY OF THE EYE was supposed to be “transgressive”, but this is just trash. I cannot for the life of me understand what the appeal was to Sontag or Sartre, the appeal that drew me to look into the book to begin with. It is, thus far, not even sexy.

“Simone settled on the toilet, and we each ate one of the hot eggs with salt. With the three that were left, I softly caressed her body, gliding them between her buttocks and thighs, then I slowly dropped them in the water one by one. Finally, after viewing them for a while, immersed, white, and still hot (this was the first time she was seeing them peeled, that is naked, drowned under her beautiful cunt), Simone continued the immersion with a plopping noise akin to that of soft-boiled eggs.”

Odd fixation with eggs and urine, the latter of course I know to be a fetish but one I never could quite understand. None of the characters' actions seem to make any sense to me, they're all just stupid in the same way modern porn actors typically are. Most reviews of this loathsome pamphlet of poorly conceived depravity seem to refer to it as “thought-provoking”. I, thus far, cannot see why. It's short enough that I'll carry on with it anyway, but I have a feeling I'll long for the time wasted on it nonetheless, no matter how little.

I've been awaking past midnight for the past few nights now, tummy growling with want. And every night I succumb to its needs by prepping a little snack. Terrible new habit.

#reads #journal

“The newspapers, needless to say, complied with the instructions given them: optimism at all costs. If one was to believe what one read in them, our populace was giving 'a fine example of courage and composure.' But in a town thrown back upon itself, in which nothing could be kept secret, no one had illusions about the 'example' given by the public. To form a correct idea about the courage and composure talked about by our journalists you had only to visit one of the quarantine depots or isolation camps established by authorities. As it so happens, the narrator, being fully occupied elsewhere, had no occasion to visit any of them, and must fall back on Tarrou's diary for a description of the conditions of these places.”

From Albert Camus' THE PLAGUE.

The above passage basically highlights the role filled today by blogs and social media, the role which traditional journalism for the most part cannot quite fulfill. Social media however is positioned to soon be taken over by an onslaught of AI-powered content, likely fueled by mix of corporate and government agendas, and people are likely to be forced to take their genuine voices elsewhere.

#reads #journal

Dystopia is scrolling through social media to see utter destruction and dead children but also see selfies from artists being willfully clueless at New York Comicon.

#journal

Woke up to 16°C. This is probably not too cold for many people, but it was all the way up in the 30s just a day ago. Such a sudden drop is too much of a shock to my system and I am thus visibly grumpy. I like my seasonal changes to be a little more gradual, please.

Thoughts on geopolitical developments in the back of my mind are keeping me from being able to focus on much anything, but I am trying.

Most of the latest UNGA speeches likened the current moment to the interwar period, signaling that we may indeed be on the brink of another world war lest something is done about it. America's Council on Foreign Relations cites 28 ongoing conflicts worldwide right now. Russia-Ukraine, now in its third year, is of course of extreme significance, as is the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon-Iran mess. The Houthi situation in Yemen along with recent developments in the Horn of Africa posits that this will likely be an arena of major conflict just by virtue of the area's vitality to global trade routes. The situation surrounding Taiwan is likely to explode soon; China insists that Taiwan is part of its territory (and they aren't entirely wrong given that the state of Taiwan was only established in 1948 after maps were redrawn in the wake of WWII), and the US wants to make sure that does not happen primarily because of America's reliance on Taiwan for semiconductor and smart-chip manufacturing (the basis of all the technology we use today). The Biden administration has kickstarted the process of bringing those industries back into the US, but it will take quite a bit of time, money, expertise, and a whole lot of resources, and the US economy (or Western civilization as we know it even) cannot afford to let those industries be overtaken by China in the interim. Arguments surrounding historical national borderlines and sovereignty aside, the need for China's push to annex Taiwan is now even more acute after the US passed a ban against the sale of chips to China in 2022 (which goes against American free market ideology, but was seen as a necessary measure when it became evident that China, with the help of these imported chips, was overtaking the US in other areas, namely rocket technology). Reverse engineering these chips isn't so easy apparently, it requires a degree of brain-surgeon sophistication applied on an industrial scale. Tawian, South Korea, and the Netherlands seem to be the only nations on the planet that are any good at it.

It's a big hot mess out there.

Managed to get out to see Megalopolis. Surprisingly good turnout. Visually stunning film. Was on board and engaged for most of it. It only lost me in the third act which wrapped things up a little too nicely, the only part that was a little too “traditional Hollywood” for my taste. But otherwise, a generally good film. The only thing that keeps it from being a “great” film, in my view, is that it doesn't offer anything truly revelatory, or even sough any seeds for critical thought. It's fine. It's not bad at all. I'd certainly watch it again (and again) for the aesthetic, but not necessarily the narrative.

(Image above is a work-in-progress from the final THE SOLAR GRID)

#journal #Radar