eternallyrecurring

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A Picture Worth a Thousand Tweets

A Picture Worth a Thousand Tweets

So Donald Trump tweeted this picture today in response to Nancy Pelosi’s press conference after their meeting in which she said that the President of the United States essentially had a meltdown and a temper tantrum. And, really, if you look at any of the reporting on this issue you’ll see that she seems to be pretty dead-on in her analysis.

From a wider perspective, I think this will be one…

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Welcome to Eternally Recurring

Welcome to Eternally Recurring

My name is Josh and I’m excited to start this new writing project that’s at once separate but distinctly related to my other two, A Rushed Joke and Fictional Heuristics.

I realized pretty quickly that the kinds of in-depth analysis that I want to do for stories that I love was a project of its own, and have finally made a home for it. Here I plan to published discussions of stories in various…

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I wrote a poem on twitter today, and it didn’t turn out half bad.

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I just wrote a review of the book yesterday i was the moon by Noor Unnahar.

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People who argue that the new Trek is too political or too interested in social justice or commentary must not have been paying attention to any of the Trek I watched when I was a kid. TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager all spoke plainly, forcefully, painfully, and sometimes rather riskily on social issues, social justice, and politics.

I can’t imagine why people are so quick to ignore or forget that, except in that it must be motivated reasoning due to their own political stances. Remember: when Martin Luther King, Jr. was alive, he was reviled by the majority of white people. Now it’s easy for them to say that they were on his side the whole time. What he said, what he fought for are, ostensibly (though I’m not sure truthfully) all that controversial anymore.

And that’s what I think we’ll be saying in a decade about all of the controversy over Star Trek Discovery. The same people who boycott it or criticize it or complain about it for being too political and too into social justice will say that they were on its side all along.

Star Trek + Social Commentary (context in the captions)

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“Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated—with one another; with the rainy, sleety weather; with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here.

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. “Folks,” he said, “I know you’ve had a rough day and you’re frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here’s what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight—just leave ‘em with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I’ll open the window and throw your troubles in the water. Sound good?”

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who’d been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?

Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop—just as promised—the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up—but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.

We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it’s extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes you have a bad day. Sometimes you have a bad day that lasts for several years. You struggle and fail. You lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. You witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and you become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it.

But what if you are the light? What if you’re the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?

That’s what this bus driver taught me—that anyone can be the light, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy “influencer.” He was a bus driver—one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, and he used it beautifully for our benefit.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, What can I do, right now, to be the light? Of course, I can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. I definitely can’t control traffic. But I do have some influence on everyone I brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name. How we behave matters because within human society everything is contagious—sadness and anger, yes, but also patience and generosity. Which means we all have more influence than we realize.

No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough your situation may seem, I believe you can illuminate your world. In fact, I believe this is the only way the world will ever be illuminated—one bright act of grace at a time, all the way to the river.“

–Elizabeth Gilbert

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Sometimes on the subway we time travel.

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Here’s the thing about shows like South Park and Family Guy that make their money off of being edgy and offensive. They fundamentally reduce their viewers’ capacity for empathy. If I found a joke funny, and you found it offensive, you’re just too sensitive. This is directly related to the ride of the alt right and the election of trump. In this essay I will

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@signoraviolettavalery

Cat Parkour

By Urban Feline Ⓡ

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Uruk, Iraq 

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I absolutely love that Burke used his caricature’s fate in the movie as evidence in their squabble, even if only humorously. 

Sometimes I remember that there’s a massive beef in the paleontological community between Jack Horner and Robert Bakker and it’s so big that when they both worked as advisers on the Jurassic Park films, Spielberg made 2 characters based on them and had a T. rex eat Bakker’s character as a favour to Horner.

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I use the pockets of mine as convenient book nooks.

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You peons are poor because you don't know how to manage the millions in your trust-fund.

Self-made millionaire, probably

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A cold wind blew over the harbor the day we released The Quackin. Smitty lit a cigarette next to me and took a long drag, the kind that left a lingering burn.

“It’s going to be the death of us all,” he said, spitting on the ground. Cigarette smoke hung in the air between us. “Mark my words. Death of us all.”

I didn’t have the heart to speak my agreement. The bastards designed The Quackin as a last ditch effort to create the dankest boat-related meme.

I imagined some scientist in a lab somewhere asking, “What two things can we combine to make tug boats seem relevant?”

To which another scientist, perhaps someone with the wispy beginnings of a combover, replied, “It needs to be something majestic--something that gets a lot of attention.”

“Rubber ducks,” said the first. “If you combine cats and rubber ducks you get something vastly more than the some of its parts. It defies the laws of conservation of energy, like a perpetual motion machine.”

So those sumbitches did it. They combined tug boats and rubber ducks.

Smitty pushed away from the boathouse overlooking the river, shaking his head. “Giant rubber ducks, man. The hubris.”

As he walked toward the quay to board his own small fishing vessel he tossed his butt into the water. “You comin’?”

I took one last look at The Quackin, never guessing that I’d never see that harbor again.

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@signoraviolettavalery Yes. See: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/our-solar-system/44-our-solar-system/the-moon/general-questions/107-can-you-fire-a-gun-on-the-moon-intermediate

So America could totally go kick some moon ghost butt.

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This definitely applies to writing, too.

“Words can lie. See beyond them.”

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@comtessedebussy