I have No idea why I'm here

Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

My Father's House by Bruce Springsteen

lyrics below the cut:

like maybe perhaps perchance we don't want it scanning our children's faces to do age verification because we don't know what it's going to do with those scans down the line. maybe we shouldn't be using it like a therapy machine and telling it our deepest, most painful things. maybe we shouldn't be giving it a dossier of our detailed medical information, especially in a world (in the us) where things like not being able to hold pre-existing conditions against someone for insurance is increasingly threatened. perhaps we shouldn't be scanning our faces for funny little short videos into something that can also generate porn on demand with all of the data it's collected.

Feeling dirty and grimy for extended periods of time is extremely draining on the mental well-being of humans. Psychological studies prove it is detrimental to our self-esteem and contentment. And no wonder; we are animals--homo sapiens, a kind of ape--that instinctively places high importance on personal grooming. Like monkeys and cats and birds in a zoo, one of the best ways to make us feel sad ... is to make us feel gross to ourselves.

So here's an easy saying from my therapist/zookeeper:

"If you feel like you hate the world, eat something.

If you feel like the world hates you, get some sleep.

If you feel like you hate yourself, take a shower.