It is 2:34PM; I just finished a lengthy writing assignment, which I believe I did decently on. My dog is sleeping beside me on a rather small couch; I am listening to the 9/11 Iceberg by RamtroStudios, I have linked the video here. I have also linked his video about "Goth Public Access," which is linked here. This entry is going to be formatted weird, I am going to present today and yesterday's events first and then go into my week as I will be talking about 9/11's 25th anniversary in the friday section. My weekday section isn't really interesting; just know I worked as a psuedo-courier, carried lab samples, observed Manual Adjusting Mechanisms, and was tired the whole time.

This morning I woke up at about 7 AM and spent some time with Kyra before going with her to pick up some Tudor's breakfast and than I dropped her off and headed to my mom's. Once at my mom's, I talked to her and my stepdad and worked on my writing assignment and I finished it about 1PM today. I did not go to church due to needing to work on the assignment, but I called my grandma and we had a very good conversation that lasted 30 minutes. I'm planning on going to church on Wednesday to make up for missing today.

Yesterday, me, Kyra, and her friend Savannah went out and about - which was very nice. Savannah is one of Kyra's coworkers and is a nice and normal lady. Our plan was to go to Ripley, WV for a nice little Horror-themed Sundae place named "I Scream Sundaes." Me and Kyra picked Savannah up at about 1PM and we started driving towards Ripley. We hit a storm near Pax and it was rather nasty and driving difficult. We eventually passed the storm and we stopped in Charleston to go to a Wingstop. The Wingstop was very good and I ate a 6 Piece Order of Original Hot wings. The Wingstop played a playlist that shared a lot of the same songs that played at my high school dances. There was a nerby art fair in Charleston and we all went. It was a rather amazing find that made the whole trip more engaging than if we had just went to Ripley. The street fair was cool, there was a shop we went to called Wild Wood Metaphysical that was really cool. There was also a music store that I bought some rubber mallets from - I need to buy some more gongs. After the music store we looked around the street fair, which was nice but expensive. After looking around we drove up to Ripley and got some sundaes. Each sundae was based on a horror movie and I got the Jaws sundae which was a vanilla sundae with blue food dye and red sugar icing on the sundae's glass. They were good sundaes and we all enjoyed them, we were all just so full from Wingstop. After our sundaes, we drove home (feeling bloated and tired). Me and Kyra got home a little before 8PM and we relaxed for a little bit before going to bed.

This is where I'll start Tuesday's section:

On Tuesday, nothing much of note happened. I finished The Suffering Channel by David Foster Wallace and I did not really enjoy the story. It is a rather gross story, gross in the same way that Zizek analyzes Lacan or Kristeva through toilets; This sort of excratory motif is constant through the story and "The Suffering Channel" itself holds the attention of the story for a brief stanza that comes off as compressed and almost parody of DFW's ability to describe (almost Lynchian) traumatic and disturbing events that occur in the corners of rural and suburban America; It should be noted too that stories like "Incarnations," "Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (VIII)," and several of the passages in "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," are both disturbing and obviously have some meaningful figurative choices that go beyond the text itself but these are abscene (atleast to me) in "The Suffering Channel." I will say there is a noted twin motif in this story that is interesting, the dream sequence (and the ghoulish entity in the dream(s?) that I think is mentioned in the story) is interesting as usual, but The Suffering Channel itself is an interesting idea that could've been expounded upon (a lot of people cite this story as being powerful for predicting the advent of shock sites and rekt threads) but falls sort with just being a list of disturbing anecdotes followed by a realitively flat story. I will say the story takes place partially in the World Trade Center, which makes the dream and ghoul stuff interesting but for the most part. One of the final passages that mentions a woman employed at Style Magazine's WTC office only has 10 weeks to live reminds me of DFW's "Little Expressionless Animals," but TSC is probably one of my least favorite stories.

On Wednesday, not much of note also happened, however, I spent a majority of my work day and car rides to and from work listening to Pallettown's narration of DFW's "Mister Squishy," which is a very good story from DFW's short story collection "Oblivion." Oblivion is the collection that has The Suffering Channel as one of it's story. Oblivion is honestly a masterpiece, TSC included - because I may like that story with time. Oblivion is objectively ordered awkwardly, stories that accessible and amazing like "Good Ol Neon" and "The Soul is Not A Smithy" are in the middle of collection whilst "Mister Squishy," which is a very great story, although it was one of those stories where the jargon is so overwhelming it is very difficult to get through the 60+ pages of the first story. I think when people say "DFW is a difficult author to understand," I think they really mean "DFW is a lot easier to understand through audio," because many people are introduced to his work through things like the Infinite Jest Audible Audiobook and the various short story narrations on YouTube. Mister Squishy is one of these stories that is very delightful and easy to understand/follow along through listening and I think it's easy to get lost or not know what to pay attention to on the page (I could just be a bad reader). Anyway, Mister Squishy is about a lot of different things but the primary plot follows a Focus Group Researcher, Terry Schmidt analyzing his own thoughts and the focus group for a snack-candy called "Felonies," which is a product line of a Hostess-like brand called "Mister Squishy." The story also examines Terry Schmidt's loneliness and relationship to his colleagues and interest in descriptive statistics and (this is most important to the possible plot) organic chemistry. The story is primarily about Terry Schmidt and unfolds a narrative about him potentially coming to the conclusion that he isn't able to make a change and the only way he can make a change is to poision the focus group for "Felonies;" This tension is highetened by a dual narrative in which alongside the focus group and Terry Schmidt's description of loneliness and ricin knowledge (that may or may not actually be happening in the story) there as an unnamed climber who climbs the focus group's office building in rather dramatic language. The usuage of over-the-top jargon presents a sort of stream-of-consciousness flow to the story (that is easily understood through an audiobook) that also mimics the sort of feedback loop of everyday life that each person possesses within their own subjective experience within each individual perceived moment. This sort of complexity is essential to the story, including a 900 word sentence that discusses Terry Schmidt's inability to make a change in his life; Schmidt discusses Johnson & Johnson's handling of the 1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders as a case study in how J&J was able to recover and even reclaim consumer trust from the subsquent recall. This points to an eerie sort of predictiveness to the story in Terry Schmidt's realization that it is easier to tear something down than to build something up. It is essentially a cliche that the best thing one can do in this world that is too big to make a difference is to make a positive impact on just one person or animal or system for just a moment; this to a pessimist is seen as too much effort for very, very little and it is easier to sink into the jaded world of pessimism and the use of irony as a shield and becomes very dangerous very quickly (how this becomes dangerous is outside the scope of this blog entry, but a clear example is Terry Schmidt's possible poisioning of the focus group in this story). The other section to this story has to deal with the fact that the figure that climbs the tower is revealed to be involved with a publicity stunt and the story never states if Terry Schmidt actually does posion the focus group which provides and even scarier possibility; the story has no conclusion and the whole narrative for was for nothing. This isn't to say the story is pointless - it's the fact that this story reflects most of our own inner dialouges and frustrations and worthless feelings that story emphasizes that fact our world of capital and petty frustration and petty ranks and promotions leads to a no-win house of cards that creates these feedback loops - Mister Squishy doesn't even end when discussing Schmidt, it ends while discussing his boss, which seems to be a feeling that mirrors a lot of discourse present in the story related to Schmidt's feelings and the complex work politics and psychology.

After work, I went to pick up Kyra. I was going to take her driving, which I was very excited for. When she got in my car, her hair was curled and lovely and her voice was smooth and sweet like it always is. Me and her went to the local park to practice driving and she did really good - she needs to work on braking smoothly but other than that she does good - I was surprised how good she did on the speedbumps at the park. The park's loop was a little too short for her to drive so she drive on the actual main road and she did good although she was certainly more nervous - this is normal and I did the same thing when I first drove on the main road. There was a couple cars were behind her, which is also normal, and we didn't drive for a long time and one guy honk his horn right before she turned onto a nicer, more rural road which she did great on whilst building up speed. I told she did really good and we went to Diary Queen and it was about 8:30 PM by the time I dropped her off and I went home and went to bed.

Thursday was a long and tiring day and I don't really care to detail it because it wasn't interesting in the slightest. What I will say is that Thursday was the 10th, the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's death. I won't go into detail surrounding my thoughts on his death or the politics of his death or the weird sort of culture that has sprung from his death as I see it as a sort of venus fly trap - but I will say is I remember sitting in silence in my office, checking the threads about the event, and being entrapped in this event with the entire world. I won't say it's the first event like this in my life, because it's not, I remember the UHC shooting fairly well but Charlie Kirk was the first event like that that I was transfixed to and it was one of the first events that I knew there was a significant impact in some way - even if this impact may dissapiate in years after this blog. I remember brief snippets of events that people have forgotten in some ways enless brought up like the BP Oil Spill or Anthony Wiener's resignation or Hurricane Sandy or several other historical events for the early 2010s but this assassination was the first that I was atleast fully conscious of the event and how it would turn our in some way. This isn't to compare the assassination to anything but what I am saying is these events (both positive and negative) are metabolized by the public in some way either through art or through conversation or through internal monolouges or brief cultural connections of memory. For example, the creepypasta "Zombie Outbreak 2012," seems to be someone's response to the events of the May 2012 Cannibal Attack. As I've grown older, I've found these memories about historical events (both big and small, positive and negative) to be extremely important - they are a foundation to our history and how we experience the world, and preceive other's experience and important events. Joseph Conrad's commentary on the Titanic disaster is just as important as a secondary source as forum posts about 9/11 and the Ghent Little General Explosion and countless other events that have been perserved. I could go on about this topic, however I do not think I can articulate myself well enough for some of the ideas I'm trying to illustrate and am instead bleeding out my historical obsession on the page; I think the way I can best articulate this is in the Friday section:

Friday, September 11th, 2026 marked the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center. I was not born until October 23rd, 2002 so I only experienced the aftermath of 9/11 but my psychology (like most of my generation) was ever affected by those events. My childhood was filled with anecdotes about where people were when the attacks were taking place (these anecdotes were also paired with memories of my parents talking about their school peers falling into drug use and dying, which I think caused me to develop a rather confrontional and acceptance of death as something that can happen at anytime). I think this established within my soul (alongside the frequent phrase "never forget") a necessity to remember these anecdotes and remember these stories. It should be said that the tragedy that changed the world on 9/11/2001 isn't one that can be contained within other's perspective about what they think about the tragedy, it's a tragedy that affected and united the world in such a powerful way that has lasted everpresent in our memory for 25 years. The impact of significant loss has bypassed the philosophilizing in the way of Zizek or Mitchell Henderson and become completely abstract - it's often that 9/11's impact is articulated through music or visual art or the same abstractions that can be found in our hearts when a small fraction of the grief placed into the world that day enters. When we see the lonely cars at Giant's stadium from dead WTC commuters or when we hear the muzak recordings from the WTC, we are reminded of an all too familiar truth of our own mortality and the lives of our loved ones and peers.

On Friday, at 8:45 AM - I noticed the time (8:46:30 AM being the time in which American Flight 11 struck the North Tower) and I waited for the minute to pass and the next minute and I just listened to the normal sounds of outside conversations, the silence in my office, papers shuffling around. It was really eerie, being so far away yet so attached to a moment I wasn't even alive for.

When I made home I watched Jack Taliercio's WTC footage and "9/11 The Day That Changed America," just before going to bed I saw footage from a concert Phil Elverum did playing my favorite album, The Glow pt. 2. The concert is linked here.

When people discuss 9/11, they talk of it as the day the world changed forever; while this is true, I believe it was the first real cost of a world that no one realized had already changed. The Glow pt. 2 was released on 9/11/2001; this was due to Tuesday being a relatively safe choice in scheduling album releases at the time. What makes the connection between The Glow and 9/11 so intense is that The Glow pt. 2 is an album about returning to nature due to emotional circumstances and feeling small in the grand scheme of the universe and ultimately the death of the narrator; these events are at contrast with the 9/11 attacks which filled televisions screens across the nations with chemical smog and boeing airliners and televised tragedy at a large cultural scale. I've exhausted this analysis, but I can't help but think that when Phil Elverum sings "it's a precious thing we losted," there's something hidden in that line that only the universe itself knew.

Everyday we wake up and we don't know if this day will be our last. Every moment is adjoined by an ever-concluding past and an ever-unfolding future. Parts of our story will never be answered, sometimes there is no resolve for our traumas, sometimes our purpose in life passes by in an instant without us even knowing, so from the little I know about life, I would say it is best to fill your life with love when you can - to make good memories while today is still today and to tell those you love that you love them. I am going to bed.

Goodnight.