Palaver

Nov 27, 2025 - Internal Monologue is Sooooo 21st Century

It’s an old discussion, a couple years old at least (guh does time pass quickly these days), but I’m a slow processor and an even slower writer. But it came up recently in a conversation so I felt I should revisit it.

The premise: You aren’t cool or better because you have an “internal monologue.” In fact, you are probably worse for it.

So what is this “internal monologue?” It’s that voice you hear in your head. No, not the one reading this out to you. It’s your own voice reflecting upon things as they are happening and conveying them back to you in prose. It’s your brain narrativizing your experience as it happens.

This is not a good thing. Self-narrativization is self-harm. Narrativization of reality is always unethical. It’s a violence against the plural of experience towards a singular. That singular is always shaped by valuation. Since we cannot escape value standards imposed by our society, we are destroying our experiences, selves, and others to match up with the standard of narrative of the society.

It’s very strange that I see therapists and some in the mental health advocacy realm recommend this practice. In fact, they frame journaling as a ritual in narrativization. “Making sense of the world around you and yourself” is how they frame it.

So we should do this to make the world make sense? So we can self-craft our place in it? This seems like caving into the lesser parts of the self: the neurotic (“I cannot handle a world that isn’t rational and thus predictable”), the external validation seeking (“I must fit into socially accepted narratives”), and the hopelessly idealistic (“I wish my life to be meaningful by approximating it to that which myself and others find beautiful”).

What is lost in the process?

• The experiences and motives leading to behavior that don’t fit the narrative. Perhaps those things deserve even more consideration than typical things do.
• Understandings of others that lie outside of our own worldview. You will misunderstand others and you will mistreat them if you can only approach them from your own point of view.
• A whole lot of meaningless fun.

To bring this back: I don’t think an internal monologue is indicative of intelligence, but personality defect. The world isn’t a book; maybe you should visit it some time.

Nov 23, 2025 - A Metric Fuckton

I recently perceived, for the first time, the phrase “metric fuckton.” Language is often parroted, as is behavior, and without constant self-examination we will forget that everything we’ve ever said and done was at one point the conscious decision of some - probably now-deceased - person. Something we’ve accepted without reflection as there is far too much shit in the world to be in a constant state of reflection on every new thing. Sometimes that examination is serious and meaningful; other times its silly. For example, imagine the phrase “metric fuckton.”

A “metric” ton is a real unit of weight; I knew this, but not really what it was. I’d guess since it’s called a “ton” it’d be close in weight to an “Imperial” ton. Since there’s a hair over 2 pounds to a kilogram and metric is all based on powers of 10, I’d guess it’d be 1000 kilograms… I’d be correct.

“But isn’t that just a megagram?”

No sooner had the words left my mouth when I realized what an absurdity that word is.

(Please read in circus announcer voice)

You’ve heard of the gram. Smallest unit of weight you’ll measure on any given day. Now… let me introduce to you, it’s MUCH bigger cousin… Larger than any human can lift.. the MEGAGRAM!!

Even folks back in the 19th century people were familiar with the colloquial meaning of the “ton” and snake oil salesmen, and would arrive at the same decision that maybe “metric ton” was a bit more linguistically appealing.

Finally, I saw this on Colfax today. I like weird, but this might be a stretch.

Nov 6, 2025 - "My House Was Surrounded By Cornfields and I Was Depressed"

So I live in Denver now, which is basically the Midwest if you ask the Californians that keep move here for some fucking reason. I was joking around with an old friend from Alabama about Midwest Emo songs being titled either extremely specific and nonsensical full-ass sentences, e.g. “We Made Love On The Sheets I Rubbed My Cheetos-Stained Fingers On” or just single words which are people’s names like “Rudy” or “Carissa.” This of course reminded me of Carissa - Sun Kill Moon.

This friend of course had to look through Mark’s disco and found the song “This Is My First Day and I’m Indian and I Work At a Gas Station” which is THE Midwest-est song title of all time.

Anyways, this all went down at my local bar which was hosting a Karaoke night after the Broncos game. It was a small gathering mostly inhabited by the servers/bartenders who had some interest in belting ABBA at the top of their lungs on company time (no shame). I was asked if I wanted to sing and I declined because “I don’t know anything but sad songs.” I don’t think they’d love to hear The Anvil Will Fall by Harvey Milk or Tango Till They’re Sore by Tom Waits.

Oct 20, 2025 - "Otrovert": Classifying Relationships With The "Other"

I recently learned of the term “otrovert” which Gemini Overview defines as:

An otrovert is a term for a personality type, coined by psychiatrist Dr. Rami Kaminski, that describes individuals who do not seek to belong to groups but instead embrace their sense of “otherness” and independent thought.

The main difference between an “introvert” or “extravert,” and an “otrovert” (I will leave the parenthesis out from now on, but please read it as if they are still there =) is that an otrovert may enjoy social contact, but does not orient their social behavior towards the group. This is opposed to both introverts and extroverts, which, while having different focuses, still orient their social behavior towards the group.

An introvert may eventually grow tired of socializing and prefer personal time, but when they are socializing they interact with other individuals via their group identity and shared values. Otroverts will interact with other individuals as Unique (capitalization on purpose), disregard group identity, and give little importance to what is shared.

I can think of a couple such people, myself included.

While, this is fine an all, but just adds another arbitrary species in an incomplete taxonomy. We should instead create species from conjunction of criteria and not simply ad-hoc.

So what are those criteria? What is being classified by introvert, extrovert, and otrovert?

Well the answer is one’s relationship to the various “others.” Give me a second to dig through a couple years worth of diary entries…

Now, lets enumerate the “others” an individual can come into relation with:

• their material being
• themselves, spiritually
• themselves, through the lens of the group (religiously)
• themselves, through the lens of another individual (introspectively)
• another individual
• the group
• the god

The introvert will prioritize relation with themselves, their material being, and possible the god both externally and internally reflective; with the group and other individuals as secondary. The extrovert will prioritize their relation with the group and god, both externally and internally. The otrovert will reject the group and god and prioritize their spirituality, being, and possibly individual relations.

There are possibly more and better criteria for otherness and I’m simply unaware, or it hasn’t been reasonably studied.

Oct 19, 2025 - Zoology

It’s very weird to me that people are depicted as having dreams when they were younger that is somehow an indication of who they “truly” are. There’s some Socratic stink there. And some of the American Progressive obsession with innocence, Tabula Rasa, etc.

You know what I wanted to be when I was younger? Well I was obsessed with dinosaurs like every white boy. I was actually the only white boy I knew who was obsessed with them, but IYKYK. So I wanted to be a student of the dinosaur, but not the extinction dinosaur, not the archeologist, but the study of the alive-again dinosaur, a zoologist.

That’d still be cool. Eh… maybe next year.

Oct 18, 2025 - Palavering

I started up this section of the blog for small daily posts which can be kept separate from the long-form regular blog posts that deserve editing and thought. This section is for drunken rambling and sharing fragments of ideas and experiences. It’s better to spew and share any and all random thoughts and experiences than live a life unsaid and wonder what exactly you did with your time once its all passed. Now I’ll have a long record of pointless crap I can proudly point to, “See I was alive!”

This section is titled after how Bohumil Hrabal described his style of writing. Read “Too Loud A Solitude” if you haven’t.

Oct 17, 2025 - Aging

I decided to re-listen to an oldy but a goody: Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call. It was what I used to listen to (and sing-along to) back in the day while grinding for that 100% in the Ratchet and Clank PS3 remakes all while trying to ignore my un-ironic Neo-Nazi roommate’s mid-“sleep” rambling of beating people up and my girlfriend-at-the-time’s attention-seeking texts.

It all made me quite nostalgic for the olden days, so I pulled my PS3 out of storage to replay the Ratchet and Clank series only to be met with disk-read issues and the now-defunct PSN activity message on all of my friend’s profiles “Last seen 10 years ago.”

Holymotherfuck. 10fuckingyears?

One of my friends who was the longest AFK was one I met playing on the PS2 and I randomly ran into during a game of S&D on Array on BOps 1 on the PS3 before re-adding him. His name was Chaos; we first met when I was 12 or 13. 19 years ago…

And of course a flood of people came back from that experience: Sheri, Aaron, Ghost and his wife, Maddog, JMan…

“Last online 10 years ago”… “19 years ago”…

I truly cannot fathom the fact I was alive and interacting with the world at large so long ago. It was a very different world too: flip phones, Christian youth groups where everyone fucked and did PCP, queer was just a passing fad, my pet rabbit Spencer (female, lol, rabbits are hard to sex) was my best friend, driving random fuckheads all across the shore in my (dad’s) truck so I could make friends, being suicidally depressed most of the summer and only awakening from staring-at-the-ceiling catatonia to ensure my AP summer work was done, blowing off classes and walking around the zoo and park, reading webcomics, or trying to break into the school’s computer system.

There are multiple lifetimes of my own I could go on about, but I don’t even remember enough to do so. Every time I go home I hear about shit I used to do when I was young and I can only just nod along and suggest “Yeah, that sounds like me, lol.”

There’s something to be said there about self-narrativization, about distilling experience into an easily digestible form for others (and now I’m realizing, my own) benefit, but that’s a multi-pager when I’m a bit less drunk.

There’s yet another post about nostalgia, oblivescence, and the meaning making of lost consciousness that me and Jaime had conversations about a couple years ago now that I should transcribe before I lose them. “I Will Not Forget That I Have Forgotten.”

But what’s more interesting to me is the lifetimes of the people I’ve missed out on. What have they done since middle school? Yeah, you hold the world record in downhill derby times, you struggled fitting in at the new school, then you became popular and dropped me, but then what? Special Ed teacher? Animal Crossing enthusiast? You hurt me, but I still want more for you. Even if it’s not “more”, I want to know its enough for you.

Anyways, I’ve been listening to Man’s Gin - Smiling Dogs a lot recently and it’s a great album for a Denverite to get into.

Oct 16, 2025 - Congress Park

I just moved to Congress Park in Denver from Broomfield (Boulder-ish) recently. The people here are quite a bit nicer.

I randomly bumped into someone when picking up my keys for the new place and told her I was moving in and we petted each other’s dogs. She sent me a welcome letter and invited me to a community clean-up event on Sunday. I never got anything like that at my last place; they would often just ignore you if you gave them a friendly “hi.”

Then yesterday went to the neighborhood bar and talked to the bartenders a bit and got free tickets to the concert going on down the street. I had no idea who was playing, it was sold to me as “folk,” and why not? I didn’t have anything better to do… But Willi Carlisle is the kind of folk people are talking about when they say “American Folk Music,” it’s bluegrass and old country mixed with old union songs. Think Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger. It’s not really my thing, more my dad’s thing, but it was a cool experience never the less.

Jul 17, 2021 - Rural Industrial Noise - Field Recordings on Lawn Care

Call me a freak, but I enjoy noise music.

Recently, while enjoying a drink in my backyard, my neighbor had a company come in to mow their lawn. While I closed my eyes, soaked up the sun during this rather mild and enjoyable summmer we are having (I’m one happy fucking camper); I listened. The low-mid rumble and high-pitching shearing of the grass of the mower; occasionally whinning with a slight tremble of instability during tight turns. The weed whacker giving an interrupted mid-pitch whinning, beating menancingly, inconsistently, against the fence or the house; like it was being push through a compression filter. Totally a-melodic; almost robotic; but still human in delivery; just like the professionals that delivered the service. It was an experience. It was inspiring; at least enough to write this post; in part, thanks to the Laphroaig swimming in my head (at least that’s what it feels like :relieved:).

Either way, I should capture, to the best of my abilities this sound the next time they come around.

Too many field recordings are urban. It’s not something I can understand, or appreciate, being a perenial suburban or ruralite. Many more, naively, are literal field recordings. While this can be pleasant (Завмирання - Drudkh), nature has no emotion. Just as in that song, meaning is overlaid onto the recording with melody, and the recording itself seemingly manipulated for effect. So to enjoy field recordings, as I figure they were meant to be; the partially human, partially not, sounds of lawn care fit the bill.