Back at it again

If Thanksgiving was your thing, I hope you had a fine one. I did, after my own fashion. For four days, there were no alarms. Time became meaningless. I cast myself adrift on a sea of turkey with trimmings and whatever creative impulses came along. This time it turned into a four-day spree at Midjourney. Good fun.

That was then. And here’s Monday, all of a sudden, and back to the routine. Mostly. Work was work, huzzah! Mostly highs, no lows. That’s a win. At lunch I dropped the car off at the shop, not to be seen again for I have no idea how many days. Timed myself on the walk home. 10 minutes. 10 minutes the other way back to the office. Not bad. A gracious offer of a ride home help keep my evening from being 10 minutes shorter. Those minutes count. And I really, truly, did not feel like hearing any of my countless evening alarms. I was feeling kind of post-holiday back to work whiny and just didn’t feel like doing any of the things. That I enjoy. That I intentionally set aside time for. What the hell is wrong me me?

Alarm. All right, all right. Chores. Gotta do ’em. Alarm. Realization…four days of blowing my schedule through the Rounds off. Fix? Revise the schedule to bump everything up. As it happens, tonight was an Iaon/Worldbuilding night. That felt like winning the lottery. Okay. I’m back in.

The Quantum Devil

If you like cosmic horror, you owe it to yourself to see this one.

I saw no fanfare leading up to it, but I also have no recollection of anything in particular from February of last year. For that matter, I hadn’t heard of it at all, even on the occasional movie suggestions video on YouTube. It was barely recommended by Amazon Prime, having 5 stars from 4 whole ratings backed with a lamentable 3.4 at IMDB. I usually see that combo and assume, perhaps wrongly, that whatever it is must be the kind of campy that has strong appeal for a tiny audience. Amazon doesn’t seem to be doing anything in particular to push it other than trickle it through the algorithm into their recommendations for me, which aren’t often all that great. It would be easy to miss, is what I’m trying say.

Don’t miss it.

Rotten Tomatoes has the right of it, I think.

Bonus points for homage to Evil Dead with maybe a whiff of Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, be on the lookout for Robert Englund while you’re at it. He’s lookin’ good for his years.

Warning: graphic depictions of adult-themed stuff.

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Illustration: still from the The Quantum Devil, chosen specifically because a) I love the graffiti rendering of Lovecraftian horror, and b) the significance of going through the door.

Phantasmagoria Friday

Happy Phantasmagoria Friday! Here’s another fun set of lushly-colored mandala-inspired images extracted from the photon mines.

So long Wednesday, I barely knew ye

Wherein our intrepid adventure survives another day. Here there be navel-gazings about doing the things we value, the Capitolian brooding grounds where regulations are hatched and set forth like so many flying monkeys, a nod to music history, and a brief reflection on the dramatic shift in the context of art perception over the millenia, along with the daily requisite of noodling and doodling. We may even get handsy with Rachmaninoff. Now with Jedi mind tricks and Feastings Greetings.

What is praxis and why bother?

Before delving into the minutiae of this thing I call praxis, I should probably ask myself, “why engage in this thing called praxis at all?”

Praxis, then, requires definition.

From Merriam-Webster:

praxis
noun
prax·​is ˈprak-səs 
plural praxes ˈprak-ˌsēz 

• 1 : ACTION, PRACTICE: such as
  • a exercise or practice of an art, science, or skill
  • b customary practice or conduct
• 2 practical application of a theory

I’ll answer my question with another question. Why would we do any of the things in this fairly standard definition from Merriam-Webster?

Well, that was all right for a Tuesday

Work didn’t suck, which is nice. At lunch I actually locked in plans to get the car serviced next week. Don’t know how I managed, but I cracked the crap out of my power steering fluid reservoir or something down near road level. I dreaded trying to find a mechanic because in the past I kept trying the wrong ones apparently. Nope, easy peasy this time. That’s a relief.

Then it was 5. An hour flies by and it’s time to start my Dailies and Rounds. Today we’ve got some rumination about the reason for doing nearly anything at all as part of my daily deep dive into what I call Praxis. Dipped my toes into administrative law for the law daily. Learned the opening bars of The Cure’s A Forest. Drew a thing. And for today’s Rounds, we’ve got Worldbuilding and Iaon.

Today in the rearview

Oddly enough, today went pretty much according to plan. There’s not much point in mentioning work as I can’t go into detail ever, law firm and all that. But the morning went according to schedule. Up on time. Morning praxis. Coffee and headlines. Mocha and to work on time. Afterward, saw to the pups, came home, and had a breath of a break before spending half an hour in the kitchen tidying up.

After that, I accidentally spent half an hour reading and taking notes from Raja Yoga before I realized I’d intended to work on praxis development in that time slot. No biggie. I could just tend to that in the later slot and get the sequence right next time. As for Raja Yoga, I made to the end of page 1 this time.

Some musical silliness

This only makes sense, if it ever will, with the blog post for context.

Third on my list of Dailies is music. Specifically, music practice. I’ve got a whole other category for music in the Rounds. But it would make zero sense for me to try learning any instrument with about 1/2 an hour of practice once every other week. No, once a day an instrument is to be picked up and subjected to my tender ministrations. Poor thing. For the moment, and for the foreseeable future, that instrument is the electric guitar.

Legal Research & Writing. Now with Vikings.

But not the cool kind.

My second Daily is time spent studying related to work, since a) work pays the bills, and b) my boss is my friend and I feel I owe it to him to do more than the bare minimum required by the state for continuing legal education as a paralegal. Additionally, as intellectual pursuits are concerned, this one is practical. Practicality is a down-to-earth trait I could stand to develop. For this purpose I use Quimbee. I have mixed feelings about the quality of the presentation, but the content seems to pass muster every time I float something I’ve learned past someone who knows more than me. First up for the sake of practicality is their review of legal research and writing.

Praxis Development. What?

Don’t I wish it looked half as cool as that picture above. I have a difficult time visualizing a day when it might look remotely like that. I can do it, but it begs a lot of questions.

Begging questions. Story of my life. Literally, even. Considering I’m a Pyrrhonian skeptic, I have to beg all the questions just to get on with the apparent day to day business of living and not falling in front of oncoming traffic because I “don’t believe in cars” or some shit. There’s philosophy, then there’s avoiding death.