Of ducks and lameness

This is the first time I've seriously written anything by hand in at least two decades. Possibly three, actually, I certainly wasn't "taking notes"ⁱ in school. Consequently this is also the first ever Trilema article that started life in the "traditional" way, which is to say handwritten first, then typed out. Shockingly enough I can actually read what I write. The whole exercise actually begun a few days ago, when I handscribbled some instructions for a girl and discovered it's actually illegible. So here I am, seated at the elegant Cafe Colon, fork waiting uselessly on the plate holding a slice of apple pie a la mode. The coffee is on its way. What can one do with a fork against ice-cream ? Motherfucker writing by hand is stupid and annoying. For one thing, -- o hey, here comes the coffee, with a spoon -- my hand is already complaining and for the other as I changed the page now I have this stupid ring in the way. When I was a kid, there was no ring. The notebooks were glued instead, so the glue would dry and the pages start flying. Technology, right, the constant mary-go-round a stick of stupid.

Anyway, let's have some pie and move over. Thankfully I can affordⁱⁱ to only write every other line of every other page and let it be clearly stated and well underlined : intelligence is not going to do as much for you as money is.

Can you believe I spent the past five to ten minutes with this inane shit ? Half of a Trilema article, and we're not even remotely halfway there. By the way, which idealised female form do you prefer, and why ?

The coffee is fabulous ; here it always is but that seems scarce reason to stop noticing it. The place is uncharacteristically full. The matinal hour may have something to do with it ; in the apt words of Gep, "Non ci crederai, ma ieri sono rientrato alle dieci. Adesso non so che fare. La matina e un oggetto sconosciouto.".

My place is uncharacteristically empty ; I am alone. I have managed to send every girl somewhere to do something, somewhere far, far away, somethings assorted and various but in any case perilous and etcetera. Isn't this "and etcetera" barbarism absolutely endearing, by the way ? I know it's wrong, yet I can't pass it by. Andetceteraccentuation.

So here I sit, alone. Now and again, I lonely stop to take a sip, maybe a bite of pie. In that brief interval thoughts rush and form. Then I write, and other thoughts come to the paper than before. Not entirely other, of course, but certainly not the same. A group of girlies, maybe six, seven year olds wandered by and, to their shock, discovered that the lady in the window has a tit out. They giggle about it happily, of the misfortune of well to do childhood. I should know, I had one. Do you realise I was 25 before I wrote by my own hand "pizda" on a piece of paper ? In fact, this may well be the second time. Poor people's cages are made of negative reinforcement and therefore sensible, but the rich live in golden prisons they imagine away. Although in fairness some "progress" was made on this score as well, take that insultingly idiotic USG production for the Indian market : the guy who is acing the class yet slums it with the underdogs protests to the headmaster that they may perceive their own inferiority. He thinks this is problematic, which it is, but he lies about everything else. It's a problem for him, not for them, in that if it does nothing it does nothing but if it does something it may well be that it spurs them to action, which is to say motivates them to close the gap. He doesn't want them closing the gap, and he (correctly) perceives that the best way to prevent the poor kids from closing the gap is by convincing them against all reason and against all evidence that there's no gap whatsoever to close ; the whole thing has very much a Buffett flavour to it. Good god, what if I had to also write links in ? I'll add them later, once I leave Pontus.

It is very much exile, you realise. The girls hate nothing more than to leave me, even the new ones. It's almost like my enchanted presence... but let's not digress. It is very much exile, deliberately constructed. I could have organised things so as to have one there at all times ; to kiss my feet in the morning, and do the dishes, and other things. Yes, naked, ofcourse naked. Though I guess just because ofcourse is not reason to not mention it anymore.

These locusts have now moved on, the place is empty again, and let me point it out : I am alone. They're insane, the locals, they crowd by the clock in everything they do. It wouldn't surprise me if in point of fact all the children here are conceived within the same hour, 4% of a day as it may be.

I didn't even log into the forum today, which isn't really true, I said some things to alf, but then I turned it off. The light blinked with disbelief as the entire complex rig went dark, for the first time since my arrival here. Perhaps I have left myself. Alone.

It is a peculiar kind of loneliness, deliberate -- check it out, six pages inⁱⁱⁱ I ended up reintroducing the splitting convention. I always thought it's dumb, and it is, unless or until you write by hand inside the lined, flat entrails of an anime-ish girly. Then you discover that leaving the space looks odd, and shoving a word in don't work any. I wonder how much of the "sensible" generally is just similar, mask of failure. Anyway, I also write the dash -- lines by making two strokes because that's how I (nowadays) write them for Trilema. I wonder... but nevermind. I say constructed, deliberate. It is. For weeks I had been promising myself this solitude, as some kind of existential treat. O noes & o woes, I shall be alone, and Soren Mirceagaard shall be my middle name. It doesn't take. I feel about as anguished as your average pea. What care I of such things, a proper (which is to say : tetrahedral) caltrop will spike you no matter which "side" it landed on ; and similarily I.

My tendon in the right wrist is tender, sensibly warm to the touch ; but in spite of it I shall say that solitude is great for the spirit, while loneliness might be a symptom of disease. There is such a thing as kuru, obtained by inbred idiots in payment of their literal eating of their parents' brain. Stipendium peccatus mors est ; why couldn't there be a kuru spiritual, obtained in payment of the metaphorical eating of same ?

Anyway, I went for a walk in Sabana, which is the largest park in San Jose. But now I need a break, so I shall count the pages -- 10, what a waste of paper! -- write down that I intend to name this "of ducks and lamers" lest I forget, and move on to reading the newspaper.

O hey, here's something :

Imagine, 60`000 colones, ten times what my three pens + girlybook cost. Opportunities, you know, those things principally famous for not existing.

And in other lulz :

Respect, for and of anything other than established power structure. Anyway, this paper is incredibly retarded, I don't know why I keep buying it.

So, I sat myself down to watch the lake, under the wind. Very strong wind here all night and all morning, gusts easily over 100km/h but much to my surprise the wind plant they built on a hill ridge nearby was completely still. Unmoving. If this sort of wind it can't use, it's just an (expensive) temple of sorts. I guess it's a great thing that the politruks of Costa Rica are defending me from inaginary transgressions the local Catholics never brought me through an obscure TV channel I never watched ; but at the same time everyone's unchallengingly wasting their lives praying to the holy UStardian church of stupid. That is ok, just don't be Catholic, god love them.

The ducks had ducklings a while ago ; the juveniles are too old by now to follow their mothers, but yet too young to live as adults. If, and it's a big if, they'll ever live to be old enough for that. In the interim they follow each other, spinning meaningless circles on the wind-whipped water surface, breaking up formation under the imaginary threat of fluating husks -- the "trees" here shed thoroughly weightless skins -- only to reunite later, maybe, randomly. The instinct to follow and the absence of anywhere to go or anyone to go there results in ridiculous arabesques of humanity and self-determination in the duck's pond. Imagine! If only one of them somehow got all the others to follow! The formerly disjunct groups of ducks paddling pointlessly on the water would now be one single batch that'd... that'd what ? What can ducks do ?

Then some birds came by -- a boy and a girl. He was carrying a bunch of bags, like a god-damned woman ; she was "riding" a skate-board very much not like a man. He held her hand, and pulled her down the alley, while she struggled to keep her balance on the damned thing, which, importantly but apparently secretly was not made for being used in this way. It's stable through momentum-management, but what do the lamers know. Anyway, she managed to unbalance him enough that he dropped one of his bags, and a football jumped happily out and, undisturbed under the wind rolled at a respectable half-meter per second straight into the water. Plop.

There they stand, the two idiots, strictly unaware of how utterly dumb they are -- she not screaming at the little bitch boy like the man she pretends to be would have, for truly who can be so inept the wind steals their shit ; he not going into the water to get the ball -- they may be poor BUT!!! god'd better provide without the need for any inconvenience, not even as much as getting a little wet.

So after a while they went to the paddle boat (rowing is too hard & too much pressure) rental -- but not to rent one and then turn the misadventure into a pleasant lake excursion ; instead, they went to where the closest representative of this unCatholic god they worship could, in their estimation, be had : someone with capital goods. What do you mean "ownership of the means of production does not equal USG-church representativity" ? What planet are you from ? All "companies" have to follow "regulations", thank you for not smoking.

By the time all this was discussed, the wind kept whipping the ball which ended up beached on the other side, where a kid noticed it and picked it up. I could from my vantage a mile away admire the young hooligan with his windfall, trying it out this way and that to evaluate it. Just like a new woman, you know ?

But it didn't last, because the original owners idiots ran over to the police station (conveniently across the road from the rental office) and lo and behold ambushed the poor guy with a policicleta in tow (no kidding, it's an endonym, policicletas is what they call themselves). So much for objectivism, capitalism and free initiative in this brave new world you've all facebooked into a vague semblance of existence.

Then I walked by some tubbly dorks exercising. Do you know the 30-something male tub look ? One dork of their number was counting out, seis! siete! ocho! very credibly by the sound of it. If all that mattered were how it sounds, I'd have passed the most bitchin' workout ever. In sad reality, however, it looked more like the Mutant Middle Aged Turtles on LSD. I swear to god the misfortunate human turtles, affixed by their large bellies to the ground under the oppressive gaze of male gravity, barely squirmed with each count. What situp ? What sit, for that matter ? No such thing, and no they weren't obese, at least not in their own mind. They were "normal" ie what a chick might expect to run into at the other end of a blind date. Catfishing indeed, women today are such fat liars! Thanks god you work out.

Across the field from this sad spectacle two dozen exactly identical dorks were playing soccer. Now, soccer is a marginally interesting game at best. The amount of training and physical exercise that goes into achieving that "marginal" however is astounding. Soccer might well be the least leveraged game, requiring the most expenditure of effort for the least output of show. But you should have seen this thing! No pass worked, no shot towards the goalie was ever stronger than a piddle. How, just how these people manage to maintain interest enough to participate in that sad monument to anti-climax is anyone's guess, but I was bored to tears within five minutes -- and with me this means something very specific : that I had it modeled, in my head, completely. No further questions means no further interest.

A crow sang to me while bathing among the ducks earlier, and only now that I sit here recounting do I understand what it said. Crows are smart like that. The place, plain empty for a full hour by now, just filled to the gills again. Within the space of three or four minutes no less than five or six dozen people, a good half-grosse, came in nearly holding hands. Mostly young women and small children, they're queuing about and reverently regard the bearded Dostoyevsky writing next to his hat. This, you see, this is what they came to see! It's culture! Half-naked marbles! Writers at their craft! Ditching the coach for the matinee was so worth it! Who knows what priceless, secret prayer to their god of Progress I write in my barely legible ways!

Here, have an alert :

In other news, the large drone shot down over Escazu yesterday gave the locals quite the scare, apparently they thought it's a Cessna or something, send ambulances and whatnot up the impracticable hillside.

And here's another coffee, and here's another bit of newsy news :

Cuatro estudiantes resultaron ganadores del Costa Rica ISEF Challenge 2018 y ahora les corresponderá representar al país en la Feria Internacional de Ciencia e Ingeniería de Intel ISEF (International Science and Engineering Fair, por sus siglas en inglés).

El evento, considerado el más importante del mundo en su modalidad, tendrá lugar en Pittsburg, Pensilvania, Estados Unidos, del 13 al 18 de mayo del 2018.

Los jóvenes que vivirán esta experiencia son: Heilyn Dayanna Calvo Vargas, del Colegio Técnico Profesional de Acosta, y Yaricsa Segura Marín, Prisly Segura Marín y Luis Fernando Ríos Hidalgo, del Liceo Unesco de Pérez Zeledón.

Ellos lideraron los dos proyectos seleccionados entre los seis que participaron en la competencia organizada por el Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Telecomunicaciones (Micitt), Intel Costa Rica y el Laboratorio Nacional de Nanotecnología (LANOTEC), CeNAT.

The local agents of Trump's private MAGA concern didn't manage to find a chick to go to Miss World, but Intel's local agent did manage to locate three geeks to send to Pittsburg! Or oops, I mean with an h, lest we end up in Kansas.

Is this better, would you say ? Is it altogether an improvement ? Sixty years ago Norma Jeane Mortenson got rescued from her old life to live a new, fuller version. If Some Like It Hot is anything to go by, she did. Finding a bucktoothed pair of eyeglasses is certainly cheaper than finding a Monroe ass, so bales of lamers are being rescued these days and get to "live the experience". Do you feel like killing yourself ? Now you know how Marilyn felt.

In other news, Best Korea tested an ICBM a couple of weeks ago. It also could go to Pittsburgh, but on its own power this time, which as far as the empire is a really really big no-no, so the circumstance lit a new fire under the ass of the Best Korea (the other one). As they've foolishly painted themselves in a corner with the insane pretense they've been sprouting in lieu of diplomacy, J. Feltman, nominally working for the UN, is now in charge of US-Korea diplomacy in DP-Korea. Who's gonna get DP'd along those lines remains an open question ; but in any case Honduras is going down the Venezuela chute and Iraq (the US puppet government thereof) declared "to have won" the "war against terrorism" and to have therefore graduated to "the war against corruption", that "cancer which..." etcetera etcetera. Here's a random toxic fact of the day : are you aware that items which aspire but do not raise to the factual, objective, material qualities of the erstwhile Hruschebas are what is sold today as "exclusive condominiums" for the upper market ? Not "are sold", implying there's also anything else, but "are what is sold", implying that there isn't. Fifty years ago some brit codified the minimum properties of livable dwellings, which promptly therewith became an ever more distant, never reached, ideal maximum. While you read cheap, pointless nonsense under the #metoo header take a moment to let me corrupt you : what are you being distracted from ? #myhousesuckswayworsethanthecheapcrappeoplecomingbackfromWW2got is not quite as "directly relatable", is it ? What'd you rather, eat or navel graze ?

But anyway, 24 pages should be enough for everyone, and besides I just met a chick (whose name is, unsurprisingly, unescapably, Yennifer).

Pro tip : it's always easier to get them from behind if there's some dork distracting them from the front.

1. The way Romanian schooling worked, traditionally, was that thirty kids copied down everything a teacher said for an hour. It's not necessarily a bad method, actually, but it's very definitely not modern in that it doesn't, methodically and evidently with malice aforethought, actualize the self-importance of the student's ignorance. [↩]
2. Afford but afraid, right ? And then affright, because who the fuck came up with English spelling already! [↩]
3. Eight, really, by the actual count. [↩]