Heaven and Hell

We spent last week basking in the sunlight next to the beach. A much needed extraction from * broadly gestures to everything around me *. Vacations are bittersweet to me. It's a much needed break, but I then remember that I have a brain that wants to create and it only has that drive when it doesn't spend 8 hours a day on phones. 

We went back to Garza Blanca in Cancun. It was one of those situations where we didn't want to have to make many decisions. We knew Garza Blanca and we knew we would have to do absolutely nothing all week if we wanted it.

And that's exactly what we did. We ate until full, we drank all day, we moved from the pool to the beach chair to the pool. We dodged a three hour timeshare presentation. A celebration that Dionysus would've been proud of. All in all, great time.  

Everything Will Be Expensive and Permanent

I'm not an economist. In fact, I hate money. I hate that it exists. Almost every terrible man-made thing in the world can be traced to someone wanting more money and or power. 

I feel like I'm going crazy. I feel like I'm Peter Beale from Network. 

Twenty-five Years to Eternity

I lost a lot of friends when I was young. 

Michael, my soccer teammate and playground friend was lost to cancer in 5th grade. 

Danny, my best friend in Kindergarten and first grade committed suicide at the end of 8th grade. 

And then there was Jake. My cousin, my brother, my best friend of many years. He's been gone 25 years today. I wear him proudly on my arm permanently, with his pinky up and catch phrase, "Why Be Normal?"

I saw the reminder on my calendar and thought, "My math has to be wrong. There's no way it's been more than 15 years. Hell, sometimes it feels like 15 minutes." But the math doesn't lie, I've somehow lived more than half my life without a core person in my development. 

True / False Film Festival 2025

It's that time of year again (last weekend in February/first weekend in March) where Columbia, Missouri hosts one of the largest documentary film festivals in the world. Sal and I have been going every year since 2010. It started as a sort of cheap Christmas present when we were dead broke and just turned into a tradition. (The festival remains impressively affordable) 

There's an atmosphere I appreciate at True/False. A sort of optimism that community isn't dead. Here we all are, in person, to watch documentaries. 

Many years there seems to be a soft theme. Films take time to make, so the headlines from 2-3 years ago usually have a few films coming out trying to make sense of everything. This year, the soft theme seemed to be protest. 

I saw seven films this year. In order of my least favorite (still great) to my favorite. 

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm struggling right now. It's beginning to feel a lot of like 2019 again. Everything has such a sense of despair and I'm having a hard time finding brightness through the smoke. 

The real world is a cold and unforgiving place, it usually is, but is especially right now. 

And then you have all the stuff (broadly gestures to the world) going on right now. The new administration has stopped Medicaid (hopefully temporarily), food prices are going up because of the bird flu, we have fires in California, snow in the swamps where alligators are turning to ice cubes, airline disasters likely caused by an understaffed air safety team, governmental chaos, where we have officials (including the president) trying to spin DEI as the culprit. 

If feels like we're in the throes of the death of an empire. At the very least, the throes of some cover band mashing REM's "End of the World" and Billy's Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" into a ham-fisted commentary likely sponsored by Pepsi. 

A Terri(fying) Christmas to You!

Postcards, especially at Christmas time, have been a popular tradition in the US since about the 1870s. To this day, I still receive a dozen or so postcards with pictures of your family. 

Now, I love seeing your family. It's a great time capsule. You can mark children growing, pets coming and going, vacations. But you know what I'd like more than a postcard of your family? A Christmas postcard of a frog dancing with a beetle.  

Vacation day 9-11: Amsterdam and Finale

We have good German friends that we really only get to see every few years. It just seems ridiculous to fly all the way to Europe and not at least try to hook up with Axel. 

One thing Europe has really gotten right and I wish we had is a train network that essentially allows you to get anywhere in Europe in less than a day. (Thank you car manufacturers for derailing and true rail system in America)

It's also amazing to see these gigantic train stations in the middle of these cities. Just buildings every where, then you see this several story tall tunnel containing dozens of restaurants and shops while you wait for your train. There's something soothing about having a coffee and just watching trains come and go.