I watched the Twin Peaks prequel movie “Fire Walk With Me”—and it was dark and disturbing. It had none of the tension relieving humor of the series. It covers the days leading up to Laura Palmer’s murder, and shows the murder itself. It fills in the story but I’m hesitant to exactly recommend it.

Take it from someone who used to sell beard oil: you don’t need to buy beard oil. Making your own is easy and cheap. Fill a dropper bottle with a base oil and add five or so drops of scent oil. I use sesame seed oil as the base because I read somewhere it was a fairly green option.

In a chat with friends this morning, we were surprised at how few of us had ever been called for jury duty. I theorized that it was because so few cases go to trial, then looked up the statistics. There were 8,403 cases in my home county for all courts in 2023. How many were decided by jury? Four.

Finished the original run of Twin Peaks. If you haven’t seen it and you have a high tolerance for weird, you should watch it. Some of the subplots sag a bit in the second half of season two but the main story is strong throughout. Now on to the prequel film and then The Return!

Woke up this morning from a very disturbing dream AND with “Sh-boom” by the Chords playing in my head. I think I’ve been watching too much David Lynch.

In our final months in the Holiness church, the Spider Man movie and soundtrack came out. Rachel and I loved it. After church on Sunday nights, we’d roll our tv out of the closet (literally), put in the spider man dvd, go to special features, and watch this video over and over. Good, cheesy memories

My film wish: a low stakes Jane Austen style plot set in the Shire.

I agree with this guy’s assessment of February. Via Austin Kleon.

Good post from Manuel Moreale on the ways in which we label people. Individuals over identities, every time. Labels are only good for statistics and ideology–neither of which are good for anything.

I’m (finally!) getting a little better at noticing the mundane causes of my mood. Today I feel extremely bitter and uncaring. Eventually, I realized that I also feel very tired, and then remembered that I went to sleep later than usual, and in a bad mood. A midday nap will fix a good deal of this.

I started watching Twin Peaks a few days ago. I know, given my interests and the fact that I’m a Gen X’er, this is ridiculously late. Just finished season one.

Enveloping mist.
Bare trees bloom from the chill gray,
Lonely shapes in black.

Charles Eisenstein: “Economic growth is finding something people used to do for themselves, taking it away and selling it back to them.”

A border collie running an agility course is a being happier than which none can be conceived.

Happy 19th birthday to this kiddo!

Prayer before a fire (stealing lines from both Gandalf and Gordon White):

I am a servant of the secret fire,
The fire of creation.
All fires are the one fire,
And blessed be its flame.

Lovely night for a backyard fire

I finally read that Kingsnorth essay “Against Christian Civilization” and, yeah, it’s a banger.

This article is being passed around in my little circle here at micro.blog. Absolutely worth reading. All of the vigor, these days, seems to be outside the mainstream (i.e., universities, legacy media, Democrats). Rachel and I were watching some videos of Dr Zach Bush this morning. He (and other “alternative health” folks) are clearly out of the mainstream. Yet his vision is so compelling.

I don’t know what to make of his claims (or those of Thomas Cowan) that fall outside the mainstream. Maybe they’re wrong in important ways. But, as I said to Rachel, I’ll take being wrong in details but right directionally. What does mainstream medicine offer us? Depressed and lonely? Take this pill. Sick? Take this other pill. The two pills causing new problems? Here are more pills to handle that.

I’m too dispositionally cautious to go very far into the deep end. But the Recognized Authorities are less compelling every day.

One of the most clarifying things Charles Eisenstein says is (paraphrasing):

If you were placed within the totality of another’s circumstances, you would behave in the same way they do.

That is, if you had the right mix of childhood trauma, economic deprivation, lack of exposure to a wider world, etc., you’d be a racist too. Given the right mix of circumstances, you’d also abuse children. To deny this is to live within the illusion of moral superiority.

This doesn’t mean bad behavior is excused. It does mean, however, that the right response to the temptation of moral superiority is to reply “there but for the grace of God go I.”

We pruned out Concord grape vines today. It’s more complicated than I would have thought! Hopefully we did okay.

Rebecca Solnit very effectively satirizes a prominent model of online activism.

Wisdom from Gabor Maté on healthy anger, and how to process unhealthy rage.