glowingfish

This is kind of a random comparison, but I was born in 1979.

I wonder if television for people born around 1945-1950 was how computers and internet were for people born around 1975-1980.

Okay, a somewhat inaccurate comparison, the internet didn't become common until I was 15-20, and television would have been common when that generation was in their elementary school years. So maybe more like 1980-1985?

But how it went from being this obscure, fancy piece of technology you only caught glimpses of, to being something that was everywhere and that everyone was using. 

It is a Sunday. Here are the only things I need to do today:

1. Walk the dogs

2. Do laundry.

I like to wake up reading, And then I think, after an hour of that, "I should really get online to do some tasks and also maybe find something creative or expressive to do on this wonderful thing called the internet". And then, I end up looking at my email inbox, wondering where to start, and tabbing over to Reddit. 

But now I am doing something expressive...writing about how I am not doing anything! 

Maybe I will have a real entry later.  

 My back hurts. My neck hurts.

In a previous post, I mentioned the passing of my father. Every few weeks, I have been travelling up there, trying to sort through stuff and clear his house. Mostly with success. But it is a lot of work.

I don't drive, so I've been travelling back and forth on buses, a variety of ways. The time before this time, I took an Amtrak train. Well, and then a rural minibus to the coast, where I live. 

On Friday, I travelled back on local buses...kind of for fun, and because there can actually be less delays than on Amtrak. So 150 miles, more or less, on local buses. And between being cramped up, and carrying my backpack, my back and neck and head hurt yesterday, and still on today. 

I am also strangely hungry for some reason. 

 So this Wednesday, I was going to go into the valley to do some things. Basically, to see something different. There is a single minibus with like 16 seats that makes the trip three times a day. And it is usually only occupied by 5 people or so. But on Wednesday, it was full! And I couldn't make the trip that day. So instead, I went for a walk in town, which was still a good walk.

But today, I am heading out again. Lets see and hope that the bus has enough seats. Especially on my way back! I don't want to be trapped in another city! 

Also, did I mention I have a YouTube channel? Because I do! 

 I don't know what mathematicians call the moraine family groups, but I call them the moraine family groups. I think about them while I am meditating or trying to go to bed.

For example, 2,3 and 5 are part of all prime numbers -1 moraine family groups. 7 is in a -2 family group for all numbers it isn't in the -1 family group for. 

 So this is a post about two things that happened a month or two apart, a few months after I had turned 12. I am sure that someone, somewhere, has covered these events and maybe tied them together, but this also follows the fact that I was specifically 12 years old. Also, by chance, both of these things involve African-American men, but that doesn't directly bear on how it affected me...

In 1991, Clarence Thomas was nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice. Shortly afterwards, a former subordinate, Anita Hill, came forward, and revealed that she had been sexually harassed repeatedly by Clarence Thomas. He was still confirmed. 

Sexual harassment has been a periodic thing, probably the last time it came to the fore was "#metoo", which I guess at this point is almost a decade old? But this was one of the times when it came up the strongest. I was a smart 12 year old and read the newspapers, and followed the story.

A month later, in 1991, Magic Johnson announced that he had HIV. This was pretty dramatic news. It might be hard to believe now, but at the time, HIV was still mostly called "AIDS", and it was still very much a "gay disease". The idea that  someone could get HIV from heterosexual sex was pretty shocking, and it allowed things that were formerly forbidden to be discussed openly...stuff like using condoms! 

But for me, both of these things were pretty difficult, because I was 12 years old, and a pretty awkward 12 year old at that, and while just dealing with the most basic giddy preteen crushes, this started happening in the background. Just as I was trying to figure out what the rules were for flirting, and thinking about whether I would ever maybe hold hands or go to a jr high dance...the cultures rules were changing. I was trying to figure out the "normal rules" for developing, but suddenly, and dramatically, those rules were changing. 

 I will cut this for gore and animal death (no cruelty, just nature):

Of course, it was a bit unpleasant, but I know predation and scavenging are part of nature. 

 So back in the 20-zeroes, on LJ Damnportlanders, we used to have something called FNNLC, the Friday Night No Life Club, where we would all just post about whatever was going on. It was the height of frittering away time on the internet.

But I miss it.

...are there any communities on here that might be in need of such a thing?

 I might have posted about this before? 

Or put it in a comment?

But I might as well write it again, since it has been on my mind.

I am 47. I often don't feel too old--its weird, sometimes I have relationships and activities that are a continuation of things that went on while I was a teenager. Sometimes I will think to myself about sharing in-jokes with my friends...who I might not have seen for 30 years.

But the one thing that really made me feel old is that there was a generation of pop culture that happened after I was an adult, but that is probably old to young people today. There are a lot of examples of this (Lady Gaga's first album came out 18 years ago!), but one of the biggest for me is the fandom culture of about 2010-2015. In 2012, when I was 33 and starting a job as a college professor, I started reading Homestuck. And got really into it. At the time, that was a fandom that was mostly older teens. I know that might be taken as weird, but I was just curious about a lot of these things that were popular on tumblr---Homestuck, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Welcome to Nightvale, Doctor Who, etc. (okay, obviously, the Doctor Who fandom existed long before tumblr!). I liked the attitude of the late Millenials, which was a lot more light and optimistic than the cynical Generation X that I had grown up with. Light, but also serious, in that I felt that younger people were more aware of the world in many ways. So as someone born in 1979, I kind of shifted my allegiance to Millenial culture, such as it was! 

But I am kind of lost about what the popular culture even is today, and for a lot of young people---including people up to graduate school age, the internet and its vibes from 2010-2015 would now be before their time. So that is the one time I feel old, realizing that there are two steps after the pop culture I grew up with. 

 I walked 16 miles today. More or less. Which is 26 kilometers.

I also turned 47 yesterday. Every year, on or around my birthday, I go out on some sort of trip. Some years it has been an overnight trip to another state, other times, it is more modest. This one was just a day trip, but it was ambitious. 

I walked from Grand Ronde to Rose Lodge, over the Oregon Coast range. Meaning I went from the Willamette Valley to the Coast, or I went from places where the waters drain through the Willamette to places where they drain directly to the ocean. The pass is not that high, only 760 feet (220 meters, probably?), and in all, I went up about 550 feet and down about 700 feet (150 meters/200 meters). I was walking along the highway, so it wasn't that scenic, but it was also safe. And surprisingly easy, once I got into the rhythm of things. Since it was a linear trip, I just got my momentum going and kept going. Also, I should correct "not that scenic", I mean, this is the Oregon Coast range in May, so in general, yes, it was very scenic, but the views from the road weren't specifically so. 

So why did I do this? Well, I have a long term goal of walking everywhere between Portland and the coast. I am actually pretty close to that. I have done that before in Oregon, between Portland and Eugene (took me well over 30 years), and so I decided to do the same thing on the coast. One of the reasons I do this is that, instead of seeing places as different, discrete regions, I see them on a continuum. 

And also, I just like the floaty feeling after I have done something big. But my feet are going to hurt tomorrow.