Jacob Verville

4 yrs

I fell asleep reading a military Sci-Fi book; dreamed I was recalled and being deployed to a different star system to go into combat [the map showing my deployment was from Stellaris].

I show up and RuPaul (out of drag) is my Platoon Leader. I am actually the Platoon Sergeant because my rank still stands. First thing we do is get on this long canoe... The rest of the platoon is in drag, but not RuPaul. I look at Lieutenant RuPaul like, "I don't know if the soldiers should be in drag?" and he gives me this look like, "Yeah, I get it, but I'll handle this later."

As we're going in the canoe on a foreign planet that looks remarkably like Lake Minnetonka, it capsizes... Everyone's now wet and angry; I right the canoe and RuPaul is like "No, no, don't do that! Just get out of the water!"

I look over at these wet drag queens like "zomg, wtf are we doing," about to say something, and then Lt. RuPaul is like,

"You would be a lot more helpful if you get everyone ashore and form them up, Sergeant."

And I am like, "Yes, sir," and know this is the right course of action, but still don't get why all these soldiers are in drag.

The dream ends.

5 yrs

Why does it bother us if someone else doesn't like what we like?

What if you truly enjoyed a singer... a singer that you learned about entirely accidentally, and a singer who was generally without fame. Indeed, it seemed that nobody else liked them at all, and the people that you played the singer for were all unimpressed.

One day, you see their videos on YouTube have scarcely a few hundred views, most of them have a majority of thumbs down, and what few comments do exist on them are entirely negative.

It might be enough to lead you to question y our own judgment on that singer. Are you somehow wrong for liking them? Do you like them for the wrong reasons? It may even be the case that you would question whether or not you have a good ear for music.

I've always found thinking about these things to be kind of disturbing because it calls into question some of our basic ideas about popularity, what is good, what is bad, etc.

5 yrs

I used to try to be very formulaic in my reading habits:
3 Books at Once:
1 Fiction
1 Non-fiction (history/philosophy)
1 Non-fiction (theology/Christian devotional)

I am going to drop this rule for the rest of the year & beyond and see if reading more at a time is good.

changed his profile picture

5 yrs

6 yrs

Thanks for the connection, Jacob.