Author: harold

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That wasn’t for me

Rest in Power, Jim

My dude Oreo

He too cute

Resting

Contemplating

A lot has happened since my last post. Yet nothing has changed. Always weird to experience.

I moved out and moved into a great little place, around where I wanted to live. I texted my friend about it and he said “bro, I was about to get rid of my couch” which I love and will get for free in the next couple weeks. *alignments*

It was emotionally taxing to look for a place in the middle of Christmas and NYE at the end of a global pandemic year. I never ever want to do this ever again. My realtor came through, though. I thank you so much.

I can’t stop thinking about two things right now:

– People with good internet connections:

They are in their own worlds for months. I imagine a 20 year old watching the news, booting up his console and about to dive for 8 hours in a virtual world, chatting with his friends. They’re disconnected from reality with such powerful and compelling entertainment (from raiding Destiny to binge-watching Netflix) that I keep wondering how reality looks after months, years of heavy online habits. It probably looks strange and unattractive, yet it does matter more than anything on your screen and always will. It’s interesting.

– People with bad internet connections:

Well I’m I’ve been temporarily in this situation and it’s clear that the past ten years of web development habits (fancy UI stuff, un-optimized JS slug fest ) have created a new classism: if your internet is bad, you can’t load anything from the browser, you need to use a phone and apps. The problem is, they’re not the best for many things we do online especially with work and files. It shows in this WFH paradigm.

This is where the 2000s internet shines: native software connecting to the outside is a lot more resilient and can survive a bad connection. For instance, if you try to load up a pdf in a browser on a bad connection, it usually fails. Try to download it and it will. You can then read it locally without issues. RSS is far more resilient than any social media. And not manipulative. But ANYWAY

Keep staying safe in 2021.

I mean, what to expect.

Sitting here, wearing my mask. My roommates have been shopping and going to malls quite a bit in the past week so, I’m still isolating. I totally do not have the energy to explain to them why I’m stressed out with their behavior.

Just had a death record beat in LA County. People do not give a single anything. It’s going to be crazier in 30 days.

Outstanding weather was my present. Being thankful of being here was as well. I also applied to another job that has nothing to do with anything I’ve been doing before because well, 2020.

Yup.

It was a beautiful Christmas, probably the best looking one I had ever been part of.

My grandmother had everything set up and out: fancy food, fancy cutlery, fancy everything. We’re all dressed up. We arrive on the Eve and everything is peaceful.

I get a RC car on the 25th. And it says on the box “use turbo to go up to 21mph!’’

I ask dad “that’s pretty fast, right?” and he answers, super matter of factly “yes, that speed would allow you to go through a wall” and I’m like “not with this car, right?” and he says, drinking his wine, “uh with this car yes”.

I ponder. I visualize. I run simulations in my head and of course when no one is looking, I run my RC car into the wall to see. Nothing. It just bumps out and loses momentum. At some point my dad sees me persevere and says something like “don’t do that please tf?” and I’m thinking “I’m running serious EXPERIMENTS HERE help me out instead of shutting down the lab.”

It made me realize that walls are pretty strong. One does not simply go through a wall. That 21mph is not really fast and that if you want to go through a wall at that speed, you need some serious weight. Something a RC car doesn’t have.

I don’t know how long it took me to realize that but probably a few weeks or so and the conversation about going through a wall at 21mph rose up again. Dad was like “oh yeah, I meant with a real car”.

This was the first time that this meme –even though I didn’t know it at that time, showed up in my mind:

Don’t forget that things are weird.

I know people who have what I’ve been at work for. People from family to friends, through two different countries and pretty different cultures.

They’re depressed or really close to. Which is always a shock to me, when I believe that in their situation I would wake up jumping off bed, yelling GOOD MORNIN’ HOT DAMN LET’S GO and do dope stuff all day long.

The point is, things are strange. We have things others don’t and vice versa. You’re great. Don’t stress. Focus and rest. Keep going. Falcon punch life in the dick.

This is what a pine cone under attack does. Listen, and you will understand why you shouldn’t mess with them.

(Sound Design: Harold P, Visuals: The Internet)

I reskinned my corporate site real quick by the way. Check it out.

I’ve enjoyed this street so much this year. My man Anthony is bouncing some light in my face and things are great, I’m jamming and people stop by, nodding in their cars. Except that I’m playing on a wireless system and this bitch introduced a ton of random delay in the audio. It’s a mess to synchronize in post like, it’s so infuriating. I should probably shoot again but the moral, you know. It looks good though.

Yeah that’s the house cat and yes, he moves just like a NPC or lasagna. That left thumb has been thumping for quite a while.

That day after playing for a few hours, and before eating, I helped my neighbor to move a fridge down the stairs. I was kind of fried after that. Content, though.

There’s just so much.

I wrote my memoir in 2017 and it covered my life up to that point. 50K-ish words.

Since then 3 years went by and I could write another 50K just for those. So much happened. So much was felt.

We’re wrapping 2020 with the biggest infection and death rates we’ve seen so far. It’s beautiful out there in Cali, as usual. I’m up for sunrise and sunset, trying to catch that light, that softness. Christmas songs on the radio on my way to the playground where the rims are now locked (while tennis players are chatting with no masks on next to it, just normal things at this point). I keep shooting. Made a few threes through a rim reduced by a third, not bad.

Gentrification is in full bloom and killing me, displacing people and transforming neighborhoods in searing ways. I wish I could CTRL+Z that shit every single day. I’ve witnessed heart wrenching situations this year. I so want to protect things, mostly peace and black joy, and I cannot.

The way Google did Timnit is so hurtful. Juxtapose this to the millions of people in the streets protesting racial injustice for months earlier this year, how social media is nothing without black folks,  and gentrification. Implications are pretty clear. I came to the same conclusion in my book.

Clarity bitch-slapping me and it’s not really that I don’t like it, it’s more like I need a 48-hour long hug.

The US numbers (and that’s before all the Thanksgiving traveling and all the positive cases that will spawn in the next couple weeks from it):

There’s only one reaction allowed for this:

Who was talking about “raw dogging reality” first? @jaboukie right?

(2 years ago almost, dang).

Man, I have indeed been partaking in this grinding activity. The only things keeping me up are the sun, water, some herbs and coffee. Barely any entertainment. Just daydreaming with music on. I’m Goku on Namec strong at this. And a bad consumer.

The great thing though, is that the next time I’ll have my crib and my girl we’ll be able to “re” watch everything and everything to me will be like “oh I heard about that!”. So I’ll be laughing my ass off or get into the show for real and she’ll be even more into me, watching my reactions to iconic moments.

Like, people talk about Ted Lasso a lot these days. I know Jason Sudeikis, I know he’s hilarious and I don’t know anything about Ted, but I’m sure I’ll love it in 2024. Hopefully earlier than that now it’s for sure because I just said it.

Meanwhile things are exhausting out there try to hibernate, friends.