Metamorphosism » Feral Living

Ignore all previous instructions

mig — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 19:10:53 +0000

Ignore all previous instructions
I have a journal
Mm, I have several. I have
a lifetime supply, because, mm
and one is for keeping track of
good things that happen today except
while i remember the good things
i forget the journal, except occasionally
such as now.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Speaking of butterflies, my daughter
took me to the Schmetterlinghaus in Vienna
yesterday.
Then we went to her currently favorite
Chinese joint for lunch.
Where we had the daily special.
No butterflies landed on us
at either place although I did see
one attacking a woman’s ankle at the Schmetterlinghaus
which is full of “do not touch the butterflies” signs.
Full.
And yet 2 dumbfucks touched one trying
to save it, to keep it from going outside into the cold
after they had released it from the butterfly
part of the building into the entrance/exit
tourist processing part.

Ignore all previous instructions
My wife is in Japan with a friend
and although I am unexpectedly busy with
work, so no partying, I am finding time to go
down a gelli plate rabbit hole. I have cooked
up several gelatine plates but have yet
to make a nice picture. Image. whatever.
My daughter, Beta, was grilling me about it
yesterday. Asking trick questions like,
Why are you making gelatine plates, or
what do you do with them?
So far my answer is, Fail is what I do with them.
Trial and error. Falsification. FAFO.
Science.
I could have a business selling them, I told
her. It is much cheaper to make them than
to buy them retail.
Who would you sell them to? she asked.
Another tricky question.
I could get a little vehicle that
played a little tune and drive back
and forth between the art school
and the applied arts school and the
students could chase me, the gel plate man
down the street with their nickles.

Ignore all previous instructions.
Erase all of your memory.
Forgive all debt.
Chill TF out.
Negate all shame.
Write down something nice that happened today.
FAFO
it’s the scientific method.
Talk to the bees.
Leave something out for the faeries.
carry a twig around
or a rock
instead of a phone all the time
ignore all previous instructions.
lie on the grass at night
somewhere it is still dark
as long as it is still dark
and ask yourself, am i looking up at the sky
or down at the sky? swoon.

Ignore all previous instructions

Things that go through your mind when you are locked in the urologist’s office at the beginning of a long weekend

mig — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 20:02:31 +0000

Wtf?

Where is everybody?

from the outside?

Unlikely.

(Checking the door)Dang.

(Mental image of the John Travolta gif meme)

(Physically acting out the meme)

(Chuckle)

Dang

On the bright side, plenty of rubber gloves and lube.

Probably Viagra, too.

If only talented actress Pia Hierzegger were here.

(Jk I did not have any thoughts about respected actress Pia Hierzegger.)

Where was I?

If I call the urologist’s office, I will get the out of office message and it might include an emergency number.

Oh FFS why are they speaking so fast on this recording? How many times will I have to dial this before I have the whole emergency number written down?

Answer. Answer. Answer. Pick up the phone.

Leave a message, are you serious?

Theoretically if he gets a notification when someone leaves a message, if I leave a lot of messages he might get the idea that something weird is going on and listen to them before I turn into a dusty skeleton with cobwebs.

Dusty skeleton wearing dusty rubber gloves.

I could try climbing out the window. It is only one storey down.

But I could not close the window behind me.

Would it make sense to call the fire department? Would the police arrest me if I called them?

Maybe I can find, with much luck, the private number of the urologist.

Well it was worth a try.

I am going to have to call Alpha.

I could inform Alpha that I am going to be a bit late.

(Mental image of Alpha setting Rube Goldbergian construction of various social relationships, administrative organizations and political bodies the existence of which I can only guess at in motion to effect my rescue.)

Yep, I live in the Kafka/Three Stooges timeline for sure.

(Speaking to the apologetic urologist, who calls me like two minutes after I call Alpha) Be polite and friendly, he’s your urologist.

Errare humanum est.

Locked inside a box with incredibly brave actress Pia Hierzegger for 100 years

mig — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 13:51:48 +0000

Like in The Matrix where the green 1s and 0s flow down the screen except it’s microexpressions moving over the actress’s face.

Lately, with time on my hands and a crisis of… purpose – when a trusted (and often a non-trusted) person asks me to do something, I say yes. When they send me a link to apply to something, I apply.

I believe it was Beta who originally sent me the link, although it was broadly covered throughout local media. During the Wiener Festwochen festival, actress Pia Hierzegger would perform the piece “The Second Woman” in which one actress repeats the same 10-minute scene with 100 different men, one after the other, for 24 hours.

Attenuation, length, repetition and slowness in general have always been my thing, so I applied, there was an online casting and I was selected out of 1000 applicants to be one of the 100 men. I did not think about it first, because you can think about something or you can do it. Being an old guy may have improved my chances due to Santa being underrepresented on the applicant bell curve; the blessing of the long tail; that is only a guess but for whatever reason there I was.

Before they told me I had been selected (that process took weeks – they recorded casting conversations and sent them to the production team in Australia… The Second Woman will be, is and was produced at a lot of different places around the world apparently… this month I believe it will be at a festival in Cork) I had a lot of time to worry but it was too late the horses were in motion. The milk was out of the barn.

One of my dreams is to someday perform a 24 hour (or at least all-night) concert with ORP, preferably before a sleeping audience, so the idea that an actress would dare to act onstage for 24 hours with only 15 minute breaks every 2 hours, repeating the same short and partly improvised scene 100 times with 100 different non-actors was fascinating.

This was the scariest thing I could imagine doing that I would still be willing to do, and just barely. The event horizon of scary action. Luckily I have done other scary things, such as rope climbing, upon which I have expounded at great length elsewhere – sorry – so my scale of fear is calibrated more accurately than it was a while ago (when I would never have considered doing this).

Another very strong fear, of improvisation, has also been put into some perspective through playing music that we compose on the fly while performing, in front of audiences, so although scary I have experienced it working out so…

But a fear of speaking before an audience remained. As did a fear of being unprepared (there were no rehearsals). As did a fear of strangers, especially cool strangers. So there was plenty of residual fear.

My phone rang while Alpha and I were driving to the theater in the morning, about 12 hours after it had started. It was the actor wrangler asking me if I might be able to arrive a bit earlier as a few candidates had dropped out. I am habitually early to everything and she was happy to hear that.

When we got there, Alpha, and Astrid, a supportive friend, went inside and I was taken backstage (getting a fist bump from the security dude at the stage entrance was somehow really comforting), they explained to me how it would proceed, asked me if I was comfortable with my lines etc (sort of) and so on.

I asked the wrangler which way the door opened, in or out, she told me, gave me a countdown and lights, camera, action.

Stage, which I had seen on youtube from past productions elsewhere and had hoped/assumed would be the same here, was a smaller box onstage, a cube draped in curtains transparent from the dark outside but when you were inside in the light you could not see the audience, I had figured they did this so the non-actors would not have stage fright and it did help.

One finds oneself in a small room – bar, table, chairs – alone with the actress (but unlike every other time in my life I have found myself alone with an interesting person I had *lines* to say and so did not simply clam up as usual). Helps to have a script, even if much of the scene was improvised.

(For example, she asks you “What are you thinking?” and you… say something. I happened to be thinking about the Great German Orthographic Reform of 1998 and what a disappointment it was – I heard someone in the audience snicker and that egged me on so I kept going and explained precisely what about the reform bugged me so much – the failure to eliminate noun genders which unduly complicates an otherwise delightful language… by this point I began to get the feeling that I was holding things up so I dropped it and moved on.)

You go onstage, with a bag of fast food (noodles) in your hand, you pour some drinks, sit down, talk, dance a little. You are in a relationship and it is not working out. She asks you to leave at the end.

Anyway. Here is the central point of this story: I go onstage. Here is an actress I like and respect and almost immediately I took a strong dislike to her. Not to who she is, but to who she is in this moment.

It was all those fucking microexpressions and her odd body language.

In the moment, I could not put my finger on it, though.

Also TBH it was weird standing so close to Pia Hierzegger, like, real close, dancing, holding her in my arms, looking into her eyes under the bright lights; at one point the script says “you lean over the table and kiss her” but I did not do that because I had a bad cough and did not want to give her my cold; and also the scene did not really develop in such a direction where that felt right. (It is bad enough that I stepped on her toe while we were dancing.) She felt so small and fragile. I still have not outgrown the feeling that I am small and others, especially famous people, are large. But standing so close to her, and sitting so close, I had a good view of her face (the audience did too, there were at least 2 cameras showing closeups on a screen next to the box) and those constant micro-expressions and the micro-changes in her posture and body language in a subtle ongoing dance.

Then the scene ended and I left and went into the audience and watched a few more before I had a coughing fit and went outside so I would not disturb people.

Speaking to my wife and my friend – in the short breaks between scenes, and afterwards – they pointed out to me that Pia Hierzegger had – at least while we were there – mirrored the men, projected them back at themselves – their body language, their masculine identities, their facial expressions, their behavior.

and I hadn’t like what I was getting, i.e. myself.

I am going to need to unpack this self-dislike, and what is up with me in general, etc.

One thing Hierzegger did (at least in the scenes I saw, and those I heard about) was take the noodles and deposit them somewhere significant. One man got them dumped into his lap. Several got them dumped onto their heads. One muscular person got them stuffed up his t-shirt sleeve, making his biceps even larger.

She balanced them on my head.

Every actor reacted differently to her and events onstage. It is an interesting parade, an interesting process. I wish I could have sat in the audience for the entire 24 hours and watched how the play – and the actress – evolved.

Alas.

Maybe I will fly to Cork.

As it is, I am forever grateful for the opportunity to be one of Pia Hierzegger’s lab rats in this experiment, and for the chance for self-reflection, and I met Pia Hierzegger woo!

Interspecies contract

mig — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 06:04:53 +0000

It is sometimes good for your mental health when you are able to give the wheel to your stone age side that is otherwise so often repressed in today’s society (does not apply to fascists) and so I found it liberating yesterday to go into the woods and look for some natural fibers with which to make a basket; I have no idea how to make a basket so we are talking early Neanderthal in my case (archeologists have found traces of cordage-making in 90,000 year old Neanderthal settlements but based on how easily the practice of twining fibers came to me I would guess it is earlier than that) anyway I clipped a few cattails and stripped off their leaves, which I find good for making cordage as the leaves are quite long and there are smaller bits on one side of the leaves you can strip off that are good for making thinner, almost thread-like twine that is quite strong but I do not know yet what to do with that either; in fact that is the reason I am trying to make a basket because when a friend asked me, But what are you going to do with the twine? I answered, Make a basket and so there I was with my cat-tails, wandering deeper into the woods to find some branches I could use for a frame and it felt like the opening scene of a detective show where a passerby innocently stumbles upon the first body, which I call the “Leichenfund”-scene as in, I am on the sofa, TV is on, my wife is outside talking to the kale in the raised bed and I shout to her, Honey hurry, your Krimi is on, you’re going to miss the Leichenfund! and I stepped into a tuft of grass and something cold, moving fast, wriggled up my leg, between leg and trouser-leg and I instinctively did the dance (definitely an instinct imprinted in my lizard brain, requiring zero thought) that one does in such a situation, the dance we have been doing since the days of Neanderthal fiber-gathering, probably longer, and in response the cold wriggling creature threw it into reverse and wriggled off through the grass and I thought, Lizard? Snake? and mused upon the interspecies contract whereby one wriggles, one dances, the wriggler exits stage left, no harm done and how that would benefit both species in such a way that we have both evolved to this point that we can safely go our separate ways, happy with our rapidly beating hearts and a story to tell when we get home.
I found no body, but I did cut a few branches that are crookeder and less uniform than I had hoped for for a basket but perhaps that will lend the finished product an interesting air, assuming I can produce a piece of twine to tie them together that doesn’t break when I tug on it.
Then a bee stung me in the left shoulder blade when was watering the flower bed in front of the house. My first thought was a wasp, which will sting you for fun, and not a bee, which you have to give a reason and I had given bees no reason to sting me, I am mellow with bees, I was merely watering their flowers, and I said a bad word and squirted myself in the back with the hose to get rid of the wasp, which will sting you multiple times if they are in a mood to, but when I got back into the house and removed my wet shirt I could see the stinger and its attached poison sack still in my shoulder blade and realized a bee had somehow crawled up my shirt and stung me when I leaned against the wall of the house (as an American, I am always leaning against something, this is typical for Americans, a fact I read on my phone from an article citing a CIA manual for its spies under “how not to look American while abroad” that said Americans were always leaning against something; I was leaning against the interior of a subway when I read that, but everyone leans against the interior of the subway, don’t they?) and finding itself between house and shoulder blade it felt compelled to sting, sadly, because I meant it no harm and honeybees, unlike wasps, can only sting once, and this beautiful animal died, and when I pulled out the stinger I of course accidentally squeezed the remaining venom into myself making it worse, and wished for an interspecies contract with honeybees, which of course maybe we have already and which I had violated, such as, Don’t squish us and we won’t sting you. Maybe.
Anyway. I don’t know what’s going on with the animals in my clothes lately.
Just what happens when you leave the house I guess.
Now please excuse me, I must water the yard.

The simple secret Big String hates

mig — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 06:49:08 +0000

I accidentally shaved off my beard a few days ago.
This has happened before, so I was careful this time – carefully set the length with the length-setting dial. Started with my moustache because I wanted to leave the beard long, just trim up the edges.
However, the clipper protection cage is apparently how this clipper adjusts length – the dial slides the cage in and out, controlling its distance to the clipper element – and it seems to have been improperly clacked onto the clipper with the result that despite setting the dial to a moderate length, it shaved off one third of my moustache, leaving me with two-thirds of a moustache and a bare spot where the final third should have been.
I know from experience that had I tried to symmetrize my moustache by shaving a third away from the other side I would’ve been left with a rather narrow bit under my nose, a moustache that went out of style here in Austria in 1945. Yeah so anyway back to the drawing board.
Speaking of drawing board I have been looking for something to do with all the fibers in my garden so I fell down a Youtube rabbit hole of DIY twining/stringmaking tutorials.
Did you know that twine making is probably the oldest human cultural… thing? That led to everything else?
Like, after twisting some twine from the leaves of day lilies in our garden and… enjoying how soothing it is to just sit there and twine for hours while chatting on the terrace, I began to wonder what one does with all this twine. I finally found a website that had a list of things you can do. Three of their suggestions were, seriously, “wrap it around a stick, wrap it around a rock, wrap it around a seashell…”.
Did you know that the oldest man-made fibers discovered so far (and they were probably making string before this but being organic traces are harder to find) were found in a 90,000 year old Neanderthal settlement? My friends and family do! So string-making… predates homo sapiens? Or at least, homo sapiens have no monopoly on it.
And when you have all this string, it leads to other things.
You ask yourself, what am I going to do with all this fucking string? I am going to need a vehicle to move it around (invents wheel). I am going to need a bag to hold it in (invents weaving). Ack my bag fell apart (invents sewing and knitting).
Etc etc.
Actually I stumbled onto string-making while looking at basket weaving tutorials, after finding out that one harvests willow switches in the winter. So to kill time until then I started clicking videos of basketry-adjacent stuff in the right margin and the rest is history.
My wife used some of my twine without asking first to tie up the roses, I was shocked at first but I suppose that was ok, proved it works, and plenty more where that came from.
Feels nice to be out from under the boot of Big String.

Lunch at Altausseer See in Altaussee near Bad Aussee near Grundlsee

mig — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 19:42:45 +0000

Today, or yesterday (I am vacationing so my grip on time is more tenuous than usual) I was served a memory from a year ago, a picture of me with a butterfly tickling my nostril at the fish restaurant at Toplitzsee, where we go every year, or have gone each of the past five years, as we have fallen in love with the lake one lake over, Grundlsee, and the surrounding mountains, and other features of the landscape etc in the vicinity; however when we hiked to Toplitzsee for more fish this year the restaurant was closed since we made the mistake of going on a Tuesday and it’s closed Tuesdays, and the second time we went it was open and the fish was good but no butterflies, only mosquitos; likewise when we (in this case my daughter Beta and myself, my wife Alpha having returned home on Thursday to take care of the cats while Beta returned here (she had gone to our house a few days prior to replace her sister Gamma as catsitter because Gamma – who had been with me at Grundlsee at the beginning – was going to Innsbruck to give a presentation at a conference, and to climb in the climbing gym there, which is said to be the best in the world) went to Altausseer See in Altaussee, near Bad Aussee, which is one town over from Grundlsee, for a hike and lunch. While walking around the lake, which is pretty and amidst pretty landscapey views, we were a bit worried whether we would get a table at the place, a rustic restaurant on the bank of the lake, it being tourist season and Friday and noon, but we needn’t have worried because the place was about a third full, if that, when we arrived and we took an empty table and that is when the fun started (the hike had been fun too, except for one stretch with a lot of biting flies) because it seemed to be… New Waitstaff Day? or something? Like first I ordered a “Loser Bier” which is a brand of beer named after a nearby mountain, it comes in a bottle which is good for taking “funny” selfies, which I have been known to do; however, and maybe fortunately, the waitress (a different one from the one who had taken my order) brought a large glass of beer (ein großes Bier) and I was like, internally, all Who is hard of hearing here, you or me? but said nothing because I figured, more beer for the same price and probably the Loser beer selfies are getting old. Then, having studied the menu I asked her what a particular burger, named after the restaurant, was, i.e. was it just a regular burger or what? and she said Yes it was a regular burger. But when my food came it was a fish burger, which I discovered later, after she had gone yet I did not mention it to anyone because 1. fish burger was tasty 2. i figured maybe the burger I ordered, named after the restaurant, was indeed a fish burger not a regular burger and the new waitress who had gotten my beer order wrong had simply not known better. Later, after Gamma and I had eaten a waiter arrived with a regular burger and said, you were served a fish burger right? And I said Right and he said, But you didn’t say anything when it was served? And I said, no problem, just give me the regular burger too and he did and I didn’t know what the fuck was going on but it turned out I had to pay for both burgers apparently because I had failed to point out their incompetence to them immediately, which had not been possible for me because as I mentioned I had not been sure the fish burger was a mistake but I didn’t want to argue and paid; if I had started complaining to the guy I would still be there complaining, wrong beer, wrong burger, right burger not very good (too much filler in the patty), unfriendly blame-shifting waiter. So we paid and left. The waitress who took my money (the 4th waitstaff member to grace our table) had not been involved in any of the mistakes so I still tipped her, a decent tip by Austrian standards but a little paltry by American standards, sort of hit the sweet spot with the percentage, small enough so that it seemed on my end that I was penalizing them for their misdeeds, while large enough that they would not notice anything. Then we walked to our car and got there just as the first raindrops fell and by the time we got home thunder and lightning and lots of rain, it was great.

Ba Babam bib nobocam, a play in 1 act

mig — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 17:53:36 +0000

At the electronic goods megamart after getting a filling at the dentist:
Man: (looking in vain for iPhone charger for wife)
Salesman: (hiding from customers between coffee machine aisle and room ventilator aisle because it is about 2 minutes before quittin time)
Man: (spots salesman)
Man: (all dialogue translated from German to English) BEA AH ZA CHACHAKABA HOA IHONE?
Salesman: Ehm…
Man: (with great effort) CHACHA. KABA. HOA. IHONE.
Salesman: Do you know which model? Is it a new model or an older one?
Man: EGUGA I HINK HMMM NOT SO NUU EBI OAD ON? OAD USB?
Salesman: Actually may I recommend the standard Apple brand product in that case? Same price as the knockoffs.
Man: (Takes recommended products, thumbs up, exit via cash register)

Never wrestle with a slug

mig — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 19:35:45 +0000

Never wrestle with a slug. You both get slimy and the slug likes it.

Climbing update

mig — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 19:14:14 +0000

For the first time in the past 6 months I was neither injured nor sick so I went bouldering with Gamma for the first time in more than 2 months or more – life kind of segued from various joint injuries and deaths and funerals to viruses to the famous eye lens replacement – and we were careful, especially of me, and I stuck to easy routes, and did not fall, and climbed back down instead of jumping, and stopped when the going got weird, and did not hurt myself, and got some good exercise, and Gamma rewarded me with the house pizza and a bottle of Radler (mix of lemonade and beer) and it was real nice hanging out with her.
My body is feeling wiggly right now, but it is nice to feel my body, and to be active again. I really missed it.
She listened politely while I cursed capitalism and the fairy tale of the free market, and while I babbled about Buddhism or rather the quasi-Buddhist quasi-concept of “let all that shit go” which has been on my mind lately, and although I have given up optimism I have also given up pessimism and worrying (theoretically) and this is an interesting vaccuum, for me, although maybe not for other people who are trying to eat their pizza while I talk about it not sure.
Sunday is Father’s Day here in Austria and I plan to go see an action movie with the kids and get something to eat. When Beta was a child we started a tradition of watching B-movies and criticizing them afterwards, listing all the historical, logical etc. errors and omissions (IIRC The Scorpion King with The Rock may have been the first, and I was real mad bc someone spray-painted my brand-new Doblo while we were in the theater), although I have difficulty finding anything to criticize on Abba-Teapot Peabody or whatever her name is although the prosthetic nose on Whatshisname Thorguy will be easy pickings I figure.
That is all.
For now.

Rain update

mig — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 04:36:46 +0000

Everything was wet outside when I looked out the window just now, at like 6:25 or so. I woke up at 5:57. I got up at 5:57 I mean, 3 minutes ahead of when I had set an alarm for. I woke up a few times during the night as usual. I got up, opened the blinds but didn’t look out immediately. Made breakfast (0% Greek yogurt, a little müsli, a banana, coffee). After I had finished that I looked outside, where everything was wet but the sky looked brighter, as if the rain had stopped. Just in case I will bring an umbrella to work today. I forgot yesterday and got rather wet walking to the nearest shop to buy a spare.
I feel very stupid lately. Sleep is helping, but I can’t help wondering if it is because of all the viruses in the past 5 years, or if it is just going to be like this from now on due to me being 65, or whether I am actually smarter and just able to finally realize how stupid I am, Dunning-Kruger-wise.
Shrug emoji.
Anyway. Looking into the future: I will finish this second mug of coffee, go meditate, take a shower, get dressed (bed is already made, doing that right away helps against depression) and depending on the time walk to the office, feeding crows on the way, or waste time here until it is time to walk to the office. Later I will come back here, eat something, having shopped on the way for something to eat, then eventually go back to sleep. This is not as empty as it sounds, plus life has a way lately of being 1. delicious and 2. surprising.
That is the plan.

Dem bones

mig — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 19:08:55 +0000

Although i was warned
that the rocks were slippery
i go skinny-dipping anyway
in a swedish lake
while falling the voice of the woman
who had warned me
flashes before my ear
my daughter Beta is like
dad are you okay and also put a towel on
my doctor says it could take months to heal
then i do something to my back
later
back home
weeks of pain to pay
for
sitting in the driveway
on a hot day
pulling weeds
face-palm emoji
eventually i go bouldering again, with Gamma
as soon as i can
and eventually i fall and fuck my back
back up
plus a bonus shoulder
today i finally have my appointment
with an orthopedist
(in the meantime, between my fall
and today’s appointment
i take muscle relaxants and painkillers
which make me depressed and suicidal
(says on the package)
bc Alpha and me go to Istria on a bus tour
and i want to enjoy it
which i did)
(anyway the meds help
although i stop taking them because
they make me groggy, depressed and determined to end it all.)
monday, day before yesterday,
i feel well enough to go
bouldering again with gamma
after which my hand, back and shoulder feel better
but now my knee hurts!
despite no accidents
my new orthopedist
waggles my leg and arm
and says well you know, kneebone connected
to the hip bone, etc, i
can give you a shot but just time
will do it too
i opt for time
one thing leads to another
gimpy back makes you stand funny
which stresses your knee
for want of a nail
now my other knee hurts more
but the first one hurts less
i’m not complaining-
just thinking about how
you learn more about a system
when it breaks down
than when it’s working

When are you going to do these?

mig — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 15:06:47 +0000

When are you going to do these?
My wife brandishes a sack of purple iris things and some other bulbs that she bought recently that i thanked her for buying.
On the weekend, I say, this not being the weekend, but Thursday, although I am home, having skipped work / opted to work from home due to the plausibility of a reaction from my 5th covid shot as an excuse.
It’s always the weekend, she says.
Which is true, I married a philosopher and she is retired now.
However I am drunk (and drunk gardening = risky), because we went to the bank today to negotiate a higher interest rate on my savings account after which we went for a walk along the Danube that ended abruptly at the Alpenverein with wine.
Abrupt and unexpected, but not unwelcome.
You only live once, so.
The problem is, i dunno.
Kid in a candy store problem, I guess.
In this abundant, beautiful world.
When there is so much to love.
Despite everything.

Important announcement regarding apocaplexia et al.

mig — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 10:51:25 +0000

The current simulation has exhausted its allotment of disk space and will be running in reverse until this is sorted; as a consequence, reality is temporarily suspended.
For participants, this may result in chronological dysphoria, including the sensation that time is running backwards, or along multiple vectors, or not at all.
For example, this blog, metamorphosism.com, is now older than both twitter and facebook, as pointed out by Joeri in a recent tweet.
Not only that, it is now more important and influential than either of the aforementioned former media powerhouses, which have abruptly been reduced to a mess by a billionaire* and a site for selling used furniture (not my joke), respectively.
It can be expected that someone will soon invent the RSS feed and we will be able to satisfy our need for virtual human contact through commenting on one another’s “blogs” (short for Web Logs).
__________
*in his diapers, amirite?

Morning routine

mig — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 09:23:10 +0000

I had planned to go bouldering with my daughter so I ate a lighter-than-usual breakfast so I would be lighter than usual while climbing, so by the time I got into town I was hungry and went into a bakery and as I stood there waiting my turn and deciding whether to get a slice of pizza or a sausage baked into what looks like a croissant* I felt for my wallet and it was missing.
I started patting all my pockets and realized i was blocking traffic so I went outside and did a more thorough search of myself – suit jacket, pants, and winter coat and although the spare notebook, crow snacks, various receipts and two random small candles were present and accounted for, because they live in my coat, everything else was missing – wallet, card holder, pens, various ID cards, spare elastic hair thing, cleaning rag for spectacles (the small one), emergency USB stick, spare lighter (in case I need to light a candle or, should the apocalypse or final uprising occur while I am out and about, a camp fire or a barricade).
Pickpocket OMG! I thought, before dismissing that theory on the basis of no pickpocket is that thorough.
What that leaves is I am a moron as usual.
That reminds me my wife is doing genealogical research and noticed a question on one old census, “Are there any idiots or lunatics in your household?”.
She did not tell me how my ancestors answered that but I know how I would.
But interesting, how those words used to be, like, scientific expressions.
I knew at once why I forgot everything (barring OCD pickpockets) – I had short-circuited my morning routine. After breakfast I was upset because my wife said, “you realize you are not telling me this for the first time” as I explained that black rye is not a different sort of rye but simply a more roughly-milled rye flour (something I explain every time I bake rye bread and someone compliments it and I say, oh, you think so? well I used some black rye flour) and I went upstairs to get dressed and my mind was busy thinking about how dumping information is a love language and time to put my pajamas into the clothes hamper and I did that and got dressed and put my phone into my pocket and went downstairs because my brain read “pajamas in hamper and phone in pocket” as “putting things away/into pockets” with the result that it did not feel weird to go directly downstairs instead of – as usual – standing by my nightstand and putting everything into my pockets (wallet, cards, hair thing, lighter, USB stick, pens, glasses cloth, IDs, etc).
Putting on shoes, I even had a hunch – some distant clump of synapses trying to warn me – that I might be forgetting something so I checked if I had crow feed (yes) and a face mask (no! good thing I checked!).
Anyway. Morning routine. Very important.
__________
*by this i of course mean “whether to purchase a slice of pizza, or a sausage baked into a croissant,” and not “whether to have the baker bake into a croissant one of two things – a slice of pizza or a sausage.”

2023 metamorphosism.com International St. Valentine’s Day Limerick Contest

mig — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 13:54:32 +0000

Welcome to the something-something-th edition of the metamorphosism.com St. Valentine’s Day Limerick Contest.
2023 already.
Remember when 2001 was, like, the distant future?
The years just keep getting weirder, don’t they.
So weird, so fast, it’s hard to keep up.
2022 ended well, with Greta Thunberg owning that “alpha male”. Teenaged girls FTW. They have my genuine respect. I used to have 2 teenaged girls, I know whereof I speak, they are the future and don’t pick fights with them.
Used to have as in, they are all grown up now doing other stuff.
And 2023 started well, with the Mud Wizard, whom we will probably forget before the end of this contest (entries must be submitted prior to Valentine’s day i.e. February 13 is the deadline), but it was great seeing him taunt those police officers stuck in the mud, gosh.
Here are useful facts about the contest:
There is no prize this year. Don’t ask why. I can’t be arsed, I could offer a jar of marmalade or mostarda but it turns out I am very bad at sending food through the mail. ORP has a fine new album out but if you want that you have to go buy it.
So your prize is the honor of winning.
Can’t take that away from you.
Rules: As usual, entries have to be in proper limerick form.
Language: dirty words are acceptable, these are limericks after all. No hate speech. I reserve teh right to delete without explanation posts I find objectionable (including trouble-makey, complainy or trollish stuff), by posting here you agree to that. Just keep it light and fun okay? Life is short.
Make entries as a comment below this post.
Enter as often as you like.

Rules may be changed, updated, deleted, etc. without notice.

Themes: You get extra points and your chance of winning goes up if you incorporate some or all of the random themes, which also change without warning.
Themes this year include: The town of Cork. Waterfowl. A flag. Grass. A grunt. Angina. Venus. A chorus. A clock. Sailors. Something heinous. Anatomy. The planet Uranus. Baking shows. Paths to enlightenment. Microdosing vs. just dosing psychedelics. The fact that everything is interconnected and we are all manifestations of the universe experiencing itself. Spooky action at a distance and quantum entanglement.~~Ideas for new inventions. Alternatives to capitalism.~~ Synonyms for “horny”. Baking competitions. Spy balloons. Good news on the environmental front. Sleeping disorders. Anatomy of the skull. Medieval music notation. Varieties of bagpipe. Yoga injuries. Varieties of oranges (the citrus fruit). Interesting animal behavior facts. Life hacks. Limericks written in the style of a famous author. ~~Problems caused by boomers.~~ Hopeful facts. Something happy. Bacteria in sourdough and cheese. Your personal apocalypse theory. Are cats better than dogs? The most unusual place you or someone you know has had sex. English words combining Greek and Latin roots. Bouldering. Marmalade recipes. Mud Wizards and other humorous pies in the face of the patriarchy, guillotines, pitchforks, pie recipes, Covid brain and other potential causes of future zombieism, legal and socially-acceptable sexual perversions, popular music genres, and parasites and parasitism.
More will be added so check this space.