2024-11-16-23:10:09-Saturday-7 ~inquiry ------------------------------------------------------------------ ### 2024-11-16-23:10:09-Saturday-7 Started heading back down, but the couple other couples we're with decided to call it a day, so my wife and I were talking toward each other in the hotel lobby. We're back in the room now. Had me a bit of THC gummy for the first time in a couple, three weeks. It was causing too much lethargy, and also seemingly amplifying the inflammation that's been troubling me for a while. But I threw down some aspirin as well, so hopefully that keeps the inflammation at bay. Craps is a pretty interesting game if you can stick to the pass/come don't-pass/don't-come bets - adding "odds" bets as often can possible, because that actually increases the odds of winning (hence the name). That's especially true when attempting to win just a little. Quitting at $20 up is a danged smart thing to do if you're not really a gambler. I'm not for the most part, but I'm so experienced in eking $20 here and $20 there out of the table that I don't sweat it the way I would an idiotic slot machine. And there's something comforting about being able to see the mechanism. ### 2024-11-16-22:20:34-Saturday-6 Interesting day. A bunch of driving. Staying a couple nights at a casino. Saw one of the bigger bands of my youth. Won $20 in one session on a craps machine (you press a "roll" button to activate the rolling of dice in a sealed cylinder, then another $24 in another session. Mild temptation to give it another shot after this sorely needed bathroom visit, but I'm familiar with how quickly the game can go south. But the wife is still on the floor, and there's not much to do in the room save for this online nonsense. Hmmm.... ### 2024-11-16-07:32:54-Saturday-5 Well, the time to awaken my wife is upon me. It's been a fun three and a half hours pretending to be a certain personage in certain person-centric settings. Well... not pretending in a "trying to deceive" kind of way. I'm just saying I don't think the conviction of being a given person is anymore more than a set of thoughts congealing into the notion of a person in a mind - i.e. conceptuality - context. I'm sure you think you're real, because the "me" I think I am beliefs there are other I's that consider themselves real. Grant it, said "me" goes on to want to convince those other I's they've merely thought themselves into being... but that's just more of the madness on "my" end, probably. It's complicated. But then it isn't once letting it go, for surely the effort to conceive ineffable "as such" (i.e. as though objective) is a fools errand, hence why - and how -the fool called I/me magically seemingly appears! ### 2024-11-16-06:40:33-Saturday-4 Ho hum, the merrily going along with the flow, blinded neither by excessive over-valuation of thoughts/feelings, excessive lack of fulfillment generated by want-ing! Finished off some leftover popcorn accompanied by a chunk of sharp cheddar: a favorite. The leftover coffee currently being sipped is glorious, especially knowing anti-inflammatory properties are getting to work even as I type. Turns out my being frustrated by vim's "indent" foldmethod was for not understanding the role of vim's "shiftwidth" setting. Setting that puppy to 0 (it apparently defaults to 8.. yikes!) makes the "tabstop" setting (2, for me) take over, and suddenly folds can be had all the way from toplevel down, making it possible to one-by-one toggle them folded/unfolded ('za' command), revealing sections of lua code possibly relevant to a given current debug session frustration. Always a matter of the right tool - not to mention proper understanding thereof! Of course, I'll have forgotten how it works by Tuesday, so hopefully the notes I took help me re-understand... and, of course, hopefully I remember where those notes are.... Oh, wait! Blue Dwarf activity! <rushes off in likely waste-incurring haste> ### 2024-11-16-05:06:24-Saturday-3 It turns out there *is* a God in heaven. You don't have to believe that. I mean, suit your "self" if you honestly prefer being all one. I mean allone. I mean alone. But, well, someone I thought I missed out on due to a weird mishap actually reached out in email due to whatever nutcase insanity I've been rambling - or is it spewing? - in these parts. So I guess this hasn't been utterly in vain. Elsewhere... my inflammation situation has improved by leaps and bounds, which is quite the good thing, as it was becoming easier to see death as a friend. (I'm pretty sure it actually is, in fact. But it requires a state of mind generally not available whilst embroiled in the ongoing exercise in self-pity also know as "being an individual".) (No, I don't expect you to get that, so feel free to experience revulsion therein. Better yet, ghost the fuck out of me for not writing what you want to read to persist in embracing the misery of individuality!) :-) ### 2024-11-16-04:28:00-Saturday-2 You gotta love simplicity. Unless you love complication, of course. It turns out that the best way to avoid trouble... ... is to avoid trouble. That's all the likes of spiritual "commandments" are about. They're not about trying to be "good" to reap some future good doled out by some separate God. They're their own reward. *Immediately*, if not sooner. And do note how "immediately" reduces to "im-mediate-ly", i.e. without mediation - including (especially?) the mediation of time, hence the "no waiting" sense. Very simple. Pretend to be a self/person/individual separate from all else? Boom! "You" got it! But now what? ### 2024-11-16-03:57:06-Saturday-1 So, back to aspirin. And avoiding others. In short: anti-inflammatory. The hard part is having set out in the past to make this screen the simple solution to ennui. But that presupposed being able to find enough interesting others to compete with watching paint dry. Well... after paging through blog after blog last night, turns out I had shit for brains for assuming thusly. It's nobody's fault. In fact, there is no body (in a self/person/individual) sense to be at fault. There's just nothing pretending to be something. "I" mean, how silly to be blaming nothing pretending to be something, am "I" rite? "I" do it here, there, and everywhere all the time. The words make it insanely obvious, really, the whole kit and kaboodle game of lame. I could so easily believe if any other could play along for more than half a second. But half a second of interesting fun turns out to be eternity for the typical self-centered seeming self. Mirror man included....