rerun of some halloween specials from the last two years:
a. 🎃
b. 🎃
was really amped about this one. some people said they had trouble reading the font, so i posted it another time with a different typeface but i cant find it rn and must return to baby. this is how it was supposed to look anyway.
if anyone finds the post i made with the other typeface feel free to post it. otherwise bonus throwback to these holographic stickers i printed of st odilo of cluny who actually got “all souls day” up and running (check it out / DYOR)
clearer revamped image of st. odilo which was part of a series of NFTs i did recently, linked here. if it were not for him perhaps it would not even be “halloween” on this day and within our present framework.
jordan peterson’s ’clean up your room’ became a huge joke but no one ever mentioned that his second step was to try to make the room beautiful, because that involves committing to something, putting yourself out there, and engaging with beauty on your own terms as an individual.
to make an aesthetic statement in the form of creating something, like decorating a room, is to engage with the fear the above person describes. because you have nowhere to hide. someone is going to come to your room and say, “you picked that painting?”, and, you did. thats it.
really as much as im not a devotee of the guy the whole set up was pretty good. because once you make something beautiful, its like cleaning one thing in a dirty room. everything else that isn’t beautiful suddenly stands out as extremely not beautiful, then you have to fix that.
a long time ago i was reading this on the subway. old guy taps me. i take my headphones off. he says, "whats that book?". i say "its... a history of magic". he says, "does he say magic comes from God?". i said "uh... yeah, actually". he says "good." then just stood there quietly
this happened at the utica avenue subway station in crown heights which i frequented for some time. a few other interesting things happened there. once another guy started talking to me. he was black, and told me he had been privately studying with a rabbi for like a decade
...
apparently he was privately studying history and judaism with a rabbi, alone, and the rabbi had selected him for this process. i asked a lot of questions and the guy did not seem insane, and seemed to know some things that validated his story, but, i could not make sense of it.
the movie ‘jesus camp’ is the movie i’ve watched the most in my life. in a way, that makes it my favorite movie. at this point, i’ve probably seen it hundreds of times. there are times working at my desk where i’d put it on every day. admittedly, bizarre behavior. so, why?
[…]
if youre unfamiliar, the film documents a bunch of kids who are taken to an evangelical / charismatic summer camp. it’s meant to portray them as somewhat extreme: a small window into this dark undercurrent of american religious life, where kids are … brainwashed, basically.
i think this movie has followed me around for most of my life because ive seen it from every perspective. initially, i was teenager atheist who had the perspective of the film: that this was all basically evil
later i turned my back on that perspective entirely, and saw it again
one of my favorite stories about america is from a guy who moved to west virginia to be a pastor. someone organized a garbage truck route to come through an extremely rural neighborhood, at a time when this cost some money. a nominal fee was passed over to the residents.
[…]
it was a trivial amount of money, but the residents there were so incensed that someone would do this without asking them and then stick them with the bill that they stopped doing anything at all with their trash, and just threw it outside until the plan was called off.
[…]
later, this pastor, who was there for this, wanted to pave the road leading up to their also extremely rural church. wanting to avoid any conflict, he called a meeting and laid out his plan: a truck will come, and dump gravel along the now dirt road, at minimal cost.
you hear stories like, person retires then dies very soon after. sometimes this is presented as loss of purpose, or tragic coincidence. my personal theory is the body never takes time “off” to heal so too much “backlog” builds up, then it hits all at once the second you slow down
this also explains the phenomenon of someone taking time off or going on vacation or finally taking a weekend and suddenly getting sick. seems like the universe playing a joke on you. “i never get sick, and im sick now, on my time off”. well, yeah, exactly. not a coincidence.
if a guy has a crazy huge presentation at his job, his mind can tell his body to push getting sick off until after it - or, someone in a situation where they “can’t” get sick usually won’t (this also happens often, once you notice it). apparently people can do this for decades.