Back when I did Re/Creating Tampa I attempted to emulate the alt-weekly newspaper model by running a Syndicated Sundays post. This included links to the kinds of things you might find syndicated in your local alt-weekly. At the time this included News of the Weird, This Modern World, Dan Savage, Free Will Astrology, etc.

I’ve decided to update the sources and to run this as a regular Sunday post. I’m sure I’ll be adding and subtracting to it as the weeks go on. There are still a few stalwarts available from those sources I used years ago, but most have faded away, or just aren’t my bag anymore.

It’s also possible I might include podcasts or newsletters if I ever find any that I find consistently interesting/entertaining, and don’t require handing out an email address.

That said, here’s your clutch of regular Sunday links.

Book Reviews

Wait. I just realized I don’t have a regular source for book reviews! I mean, I read a zillion, but they’re from all over, so I’m not sure what might be a good, regular source to put here. Hmmm, this will take some thinking. In the meantime, Tor is generally a pretty solid source for new fiction.

All the New Horror and Genre-Bending Books Arriving in April!

Cartoons

Dan Piraro, creator of Bizarro, is semi-retired and producing a surreal, on-going series titled Peyote Cowboy.

Peyote Cowboy

I’ve been reading Tom Tomorrow since he was publishing in Processed World back in the 1980s. Wikipedia describes Processed World as “an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian magazine focused on the oppressions and absurdities of office work.” Looks like some themes have been with me for a looonnnnnggg time. Currently I subscribe to his newsletter, but you can read him at The Daily Kos on Mondays or The Nib on Tuesdays.

Is Strange Planet’s first home on Instagram?

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A post shared by Strange Planet (@nathanwpylestrangeplanet)

I bet The Nib will also find itself in regular rotation.

Columns

This week, just this from David Suzuki.

Will the world again hit “snooze” on latest climate alarm?

I bet this ends up being the category with the most variance, and will probably include columns that aren’t necessarily from columnists who publish weekly (or more often). The Conversation might be a good source for these. I might also dip into Global Voices and/or Good News Network.

Horoscope

Once again, it was trying to remember something about Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology that prompted me to root around in the memory hole. That trawling through the archives reminded me I used to post a weekly link to FWA in the Syndicated Sunday posts.

Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology – Week of April 7th, 2022

Music Reviews

These days just about the only music reviews I visit are the Bandcamp Daily posts. Perhaps I’ll see if I can find a few more resources for new music.

**

OK. That’s the start. I’m sure it will shift and morph over time, with sources and categories added, dropped, and tweaked. Hope your Sunday is a good one!

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 070 of 100)

How did it get to be so late without a post?

All chores and no screens today. Here’s Zorro hanging out in the sun. The garden bed behind him is surrounded by a fence to keep him from digging in the garden bed. There’s some broccoli growing in there now.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 069 of 100)

The mushrooms are talking to each other!

“Mathematical analysis of the electrical signals fungi seemingly send to one another has identified patterns that bear a striking structural similarity to human speech.

“Previous research has suggested that fungi conduct electrical impulses through long, underground filamentous structures called hyphae – similar to how nerve cells transmit information in humans.

“It has even shown that the firing rate of these impulses increases when the hyphae of wood-digesting fungi come into contact with wooden blocks, raising the possibility that fungi use this electrical “language” to share information about food or injury with distant parts of themselves, or with hyphae-connected partners such as trees.”

Which reminds me, I need to pick up a copy of Finding the Mother Tree by Susan Simard. (“…forest ecologies are interdependent with fungal mycelium. She asserts that trees (and other plants) exchange sugars through their respective root systems and through interconnected fungal mycelial structures to share (and at times trade) micronutrients.”)

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Here’s a pretty cool project at UNC libraries – On the Books: Jim Crow and the Algorithms of Resistance.

“The same algorithm can be used for oppression or resistance. How we design and use algorithms, and how they impact those vulnerable to discriminatory policies, determines whether they enact oppression or resistance. The question remains, as Costanza-Chock writes, ‘What will it take for us to transform the ways that we design technologies (sociotechnical systems) of all kinds, including digital interfaces, applications, platforms, algorithms, hardware, and infrastructure, to help us advance toward liberation?'”

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Wonderful collection of Richard Powers SF cover art. I grew up haunting used book shops, and these covers definitely take me back to a time when I was filled with a wide-eyed sense of wonder.

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Here’s a for-real Abderite joke from The Laughter Lover. (“Philogelos (The Laughter Lover) is a collection of some 265 jokes, likely made in the fourth or fifth century CE.”)

An Abderite saw a eunuch talking with a woman and asked him if she was his wife. When he replied that eunuchs can’t have wives, the Abderite asked: “So is she your daughter?”

Haha, Abderites are dumb. Except for Democritus, the laughing philosopher.

“The reports indicate that Democritus was committed to a kind of enlightened hedonism, in which the good was held to be an internal state of mind rather than something external to it. The good is given many names, amongst them euthymia or cheerfulness, as well as privative terms, e.g. for the absence of fear. Some fragments suggest that moderation and mindfulness in one’s pursuit of pleasures is beneficial; others focus on the need to free oneself from dependence on fortune by moderating desire. Several passages focus on the human ability to act on nature by means of teaching and art, and on a notion of balance and moderation that suggests that ethics is conceived as an art of caring for the soul analogous to medicine’s care for the body (Vlastos 1975, pp. 386–94). Others discuss political community, suggesting that there is a natural tendency to form communities.”

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45 years ago today The Clash released their first album.

“The Clash is the self-titled debut studio album by English punk rock band the Clash. It was released on 8 April 1977 through CBS Records. Written and recorded over three weeks in February 1977 for £4,000, it would go on to reach No. 12 on the UK charts, and has been included on many retrospective rankings as one of the greatest punk albums of all time.”

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 068 of 100)

Somedays I write long-ish posts and then decide not to post them because they still need some work, they’re half-baked, or maybe they’re a little too cranky. Today’s post was one of those, so I’ll only note that I’m two thirds of the way through this arbitrary stupid goal of 100 days of blogging.

In other news, it turns out there’s an award for comedy wildlife photography.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 067 of 100)

Those of you who read this through RSS or email may not have seen the handful of quotations spackled on the right-hand column of my blog. As long as I’ve been blogging (over 20 years now) my blogs have had a random assortment of quotations that are somehow meaningful to me.

One of the most recent is this quote from a Washington Irving story. The description is meant as an insult. It is a son describing the father he doesn’t want to be.

“He was an indolent, good-natured man, who took the world as it went, and had a kind of laughing philosophy, that parried all rubs and mishaps, and served him in the place of wisdom.” — Washington Irving

When I read that I felt seen (by Washington Irving!). I’m indolent. I’m good-natured. Democritus, my favorite philosopher by virtue of being from Abdera, is remembered as the laughing philosopher, which means he must have had a kind of laughing philosophy, something to which I also aspire. And I often crack jokes in place of wisdom I lack.

I self-deprecate about my indolence, laziness I often call it, but I also carry a lot of guilt about it. If I were only more industrious, if I were only more dedicated, more determined, more of a go-getter, my life would be so different. I feel guilty for letting down Louise Gluck and frittering away my “one wild and precious life.”

I won’t say it doesn’t still make me feel a certain kind of way, but I can say my self-compassion about such things is much greater than it used to be.

So, tonight, instead of diligently working on my craft, or adding words to my many projects, I’ll be watching another episode of Doom Patrol. I love that show. What really made me swoon was the introduction of a sentient genderqueer street named Danny. That’s the kind of sweetweird that makes my heart sing.

Oh yeah, and I’m pretty sure Brent Best wrote this song about me.

I’m a lazy guy
I’m amazed at the way some people try and try and try
To erect and then perfect some kind of proof that they’re alive before they die
Well not me, ’cause I’m a lazy guy

And I’m amazed at the way some people holler, fuss and run ’round
Like some chicken with their head cut off or a bullet from a gun
They should all sit back, relax and maybe try and have some fun
I’d help them try, but I’m a lazy guy
And I must defer a life of labor to someone who needs it more
I’d much prefer to be their neighbor, just the guy who lives next door
Sit out on the porch with my crap guitar and my mason jar of tea, and you know why
‘Cause I’m a lazy guy

I’m a lazy guy
I’m amazed at the way some people try and try and try
To erect and then perfect some kind of proof that they’re alive before they die
Well not me, ’cause I’m a lazy guy

And I’m amazed at the way you count my failings like some clerk
Like you’re the saint in this relationhip and me I’m just some jerk
‘Cause it’s love we got between us, and relationships take work so why don’t you try?
‘Cause I’m a lazy guy

I ‘m a lazy guy
I’m amazed at the way some people try and try and try
To erect and then perfect some kind of proof that they’re alive before they die
Well not me, ’cause I’m a lazy guy

Yeah I’m amazed at the way the days just slip on by so fast
Like ten thousand go-carts racing down the mountain of the past
If I had a bead on what I need to make the moment last I just might try
I just might try

Yeah I’m amazed at the way the days just keep on slipping by
And I got plans and dreams and hopeful schemes, enough to make you cry
I’m just waiting for that single perfect point in time to give ’em all a try
And I’m a lazy lazy guy

I’m a lazy guy

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 066 of 100)

I’ve had a week to reflect on my most important desire. What have I learned?

1. I’ve learned that working on the same theme for a set number of days is fun. Although a week might be too long, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see theme weeks in the future.
2. I’ve learned that writing the kind of short essays I enjoy writing take up more time than I’d like.
3. I’ve learned that acting ‘as if’ is a valuable tool for critical introspection.
4. I’ve learned that there probably isn’t an ‘authentic’ self. However, striving toward a life more closely aligned with one’s personal values is probably a path to living well.
5. More likely than an authentic self is a collection of authentic selves.
6. I’ve learned that inauthenticity is when you cannot, for reasons brought about by yourself or others, express yourself or behave according to your closely held values.
7. I’ve remembered that knowing the meanings of words, and learning new words (and revisiting words I already thought I knew!), is important to me.
8. And I’ve learned that the most important thing to remember is to remember. So much of what I read this last week is stuff I already knew but forgot to remember.

I have a spectrum of desires and their priority and meaningfulness is constantly shifting. I suppose if I had to lock in on one, my most important desire is to continue growing and learning, to keep striving for eudaimonic well-being.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 065 of 100)

I’m nearing the end of my seven-day meditation on my most important desire, and this afternoon I had a lateral inspiration.

Initially, I considered writing about creativity and lack of time (as in ‘my most important desire is to have more time to engage my creative self’) but as I considered my behavior over the last few months it struck me that I’m kind of in the process of building my own personal vocabulary of emotional, spiritual, and psychological states.

Is my most important desire developing a glossary of my internal being? Maybe. Or something very close to that. Not my desire forever perhaps, but there’s evidence that expanding my emotional/psychological/spiritual vocabulary has been my most important desire for the last several months.

There’s a vocabulary-related behavior I’ve engaged in for as long as I’ve been writing, that I never really noticed until last year. I didn’t notice it because it’s so baked into my process, and so interwoven into the process as a whole, that it disappeared in the multitude of behaviors I cluster under the broad umbrella of ‘writing’.

At one point, just after I started researching fairies, I realized I was building a fairy vocabulary list, not too different than the vocabulary lists my 3rd grade teacher prompted me to create when researching a new topic. (Fairy, faery, fay, elf, animist, ontology, spirit, soul, etc.)

One reason I failed to notice this glossary-building exercise is because textbooks in high school and college conveniently came with vocabulary lists, so it was less important I create my own. I’ve also always been an inveterate dictionary user and note-taker, so I barely noticed when I engaged in that sort of behavior outside of school.

When I started my reading on fairies last year, I created a file for words I wanted to ensure I was using correctly, and it occurred to me that this might be something to share with the students. How many of them actively create a list of terms for themselves as they begin a research project?

Since last summer when I started this journey to reduce my work-related unhappiness I’ve been reading widely (and talking to a therapist). Since I’m sheepishly late to self-reflection about my inner emotional state, I’ve had to essentially start a new research project. And in that project I’ve had to define for myself — mindfulness, authenticity, real self, value, virtues, depression, sadness, anger, happiness, joy, peace, tranquility, calm, etc.

I’ve used the term ‘happiness’ a zillion times throughout my life, but only within the last six months have I held it up and analyzed it and tried to figure out what I meant when I used that word in relation to myself. I once thought of happiness as a state of high-emotional arousal (ohmigod I won the lottery! This is what happiness feels like!), but upon reflection that’s not really what I feel when I feel happy. My current definition of happiness is more along the lines of — those moments of respite when known bullshit has been taken care of and I’m blissfully unaware of what sort of bullshit lays around the next corner. In a real, non-trivial way for me, happiness is the state of being momentarily problem-free.

So, maybe my most important desire, right now, is to have the language to articulate my feelings and emotional needs, so I can learn more about them, and ask for help about something specific instead of something vague.

**

Speaking of time, here’s an exceprt from The People, Yes by Carl Sandburg I’ve posted several times in the past. (Such a painful, heartfelt lament.)

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
    "I earn my living.
    I make enough to get by
    and it takes all my time.
    If I had more time
    I could do more for myself
    and maybe for others.
    I could read and study
    and talk things over
    and find out about things.
    It takes time.
    I wish I had the time."

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 064 of 100)

I’m in the midst of a seven day quest to determine my most important desire. I’ve considered what it means to be true to my ‘authentic’ self and what it it means to be inauthentic. Today’s exploration takes me into the realm of autonomy.

Here’s the definition I found most satisfying for ‘living authentially’: authenticity is experienced in the moments your expression and behavior are aligned with your closely held values.

This begs the question of what are values and how are they defined? For example, it seems like the values of a person raised in a family- or communal-oriented culture might have a different value system than someone raised in a fiercely individualistic culture. Predictably, the range of values shift significantly within the research.

Of the spectrum of values I hold, autonomy is at or near the top. For this post I’m using ‘free from coercion’ as the definition of autonomy.

Since I’m not particularly interested in living without house or home, or living a life of food precarity if I can avoid it, I choose to work. For a substantial number of people this equals autonomy. I have the freedom to choose between working for a wage and extreme poverty. Choice!

That’s always seemed like a spurious argument to me. What reasonable person is going to choose the hardship of a life without income (whether inherited or worked for)? When it comes to food/clothing/shelter, is it really reasonable to chose NOT to have those physiological needs met?

So, if I want the basic fundamentals of life, food/clothing/shelter, then I’m coerced into labor. My autonomy is restricted.

That’s just the way it is, kid. You can’t fight city hall. Suck it up and stop whinging. You have it better than a lot of other people even if you do have to work at a job that’s not perfect.

And there’s my dilemma. I like the creature comforts money can buy. I have a lovely home, retirement savings, disposable income, luxury I don’t want to give up (thanks in no small part to privilege and luck). But to gain that I have to trade a huge chunk of my daily autonomy. It’s possible I could find another job that feels less onerous and more rewarding, but I think that’s mostly the luck of the draw, and has more to do with who I work with than what kind of work I do. There are very few jobs for indolent dreamers whose greatest ambition is to hang out with friends and goof around.

With that said, perhaps autonomy isn’t, right now, my most important desire. I still have two more days for this exercise, so I’ll approach it from a different angle tomorrow.

***

While digging around for info about today’s research I stumbled across the Post-Futurist Manifesto by Franco Berardi.

“Beauty exists only in autonomy. No work that fails to express the intelligence of the possible can be a masterpiece. Poetry is a bridge cast over the abyss of nothingness to allow the sharing of different imaginations and to free singularities.”

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 063 of 100)

While there are many definitions of authenticity when it comes to the psychological literature on the authentic self, the one that seems to be taking hold is that authenticity (as a state) occurs in the times you are living according to your closely held values.

Inauthenticity, then, is when you are unable to express your values, or your actions are in discord with your values.

What stood out to me in this research about ‘authentic selves’ are the descriptions of the inauthentic self. Those descriptions describe better my experience with work burnout than the burnout literature. And, as it turns out, there are several studies highlighting the adverse effects inauthenticity can have on job satisfaction.

There looks to be a lot of research on authenticity at work. Presumably because the time you are at your job can involve significant moments when your job is not aligned with your values.

Most of these studies involve workers who do a lot of emotional labor. Service workers of various types. When you’re not happy and have to be fake happy for your work, that can take an emotional toll. When you’re a health care worker and you have to help people manage their emotions, that can be exhausting. Or, when you have to manage your own emotions because the way you really feel is inappropriate for the social expectations of the workplace environment, it can drain you.

Managing your emotions can be psychically and emotionally exhausting, and if you’re not finding a way to replenish that emotional well, then the exhaustion can lead to anxiety and depression.

So, I’ll try this insight on for size for a few days. My goal is still to use this seven day stretch to consider my most important desire. One step is probably paying attention to what kind of emotion management I find myself doing at work.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 062 of 100)

Yesterday I said I’d write about inauthentic selves, and I did! But the post isn’t quite ready yet, so today is a link roundup.

Here’s a very cool short essay about creepy images from movies.

ALL HAIL THE MONUMENTAL HORROR-IMAGE

“The things you see in images like these aren’t brandishing a chainsaw or baring a mouthful of fangs, but something about them feels completely terrifying anyway. It’s not just scary, it’s wrong, like you’re seeing something that should not be.”

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I appreciated this quote from cartoonist Edward Sorel.

“Right-wing forces are still ignoring facts and promoting divisiveness. Liberals are still gutless. Religion is still the greatest threat to peace and self-expression. … The only big difference is that I am now old. My sense of outrage at the stupidity and cruelty of those in power remains the same, but my desire to do anything about it has atrophied.”

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Long, but utterly fascinating essay by Jo Walton about dreams: Wages for Dreamwork.

“How plausible is such collective dreaming technology? Shared dreams that are vast games? Certainly events in the sleeper’s environment can influence dreams, and dreams can manifest in sleeptalking and otherwise, so there is at least a little bandwidth to play with. Last year dream researchers conducted two-way communication with lucid dreamers during polysomnographically verified REM sleep. They had them solving sums. Eight minus six. Two plus two.”

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Wil Wheaton’s lengthy introduction to analog horror, a genre of horror on YouTube I did not existed until this post.

in which i discover analog horror

“Last night, I spent the evening watching analog horror videos on YouTube. I love the familiar, nostalgic, VHS feeling. I love remembering, from the safety of 49, how I felt every single time I heard the Emergency Broadcast System when I was 9 and a Cold War Kid. I don’t know what the modern day equivalent of walking into a room lit only by the static from a TV with no signal that you are positive you turned off an hour ago is, but if you know in your guts what I just described, that’s how these videos make me feel. It’s fantastic.”

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Here’s a killer cover of Jefferson Starship’s “Jane.” Mostly trombones.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 061 of 100)