This will probably be the last article i write for this site. It’s been fun, thank you internet it’s been fun. Here’s a link to a picture of a fish . There are so many requirements for these 8 blog posts, I mean gifs, images, even soundcloud links? I’ll be honest I’m not really looking for an A+ in the class. Quarantine is weird and i hate it I have one of those movie style tally sheets going. Today is day 55. I really thought this whole thing was being overblown but now over 400 people in my hometown have the virus. It’s really crazy and i’m not leaving the house. Oh well I’m doing my best to have fun and stay sane. It’s not going great.

During quarantine i’ve been doing a lot of research into long distance hiking. It’s been a dream of mine for years to hike the 2,000+ miles of the Appalachian trail. Founded by Benton Mackaye around 1930, the Appalachian trail follows the Appalachian Mountains from Maine to Georgia. The original blazing of the trail took 7 years and hundreds of volunteers. It wasn’t till about 11 years later that Myron Avery became the first person to through hike the entire trail. Avery had just gotten out of the Army and armed with road maps and a compass he set out to “walk the army out of his system”. Like many people Avery caught the bug, hiking the trail again in the other direction starting in 1965. The trail takes most people about 3 to 6 months. The fastest hike was set in 2008 by Jennifer Pharr, named appropriately, at 57 days, 8 hours and 32 minutes. Personally i’m planning to get my feet wet in a few days going on a 20 mile 3 day hike. I’m excited to hopefully get my feet wet in long distance backpacking.

I’ve been watching videos of this guy, Ed Pratt, who rode a unicycle all the way around the world. Why? i really don’t know it seems like an incredible pointless and futile effort, but i’d bet he lost some weight at least. It seems like it would have been a lot of fun traveling in some strange and novel way. Maybe someday i’ll set off on some epic adventure. Hopefully i’ll choose a method of transportation slightly more efficient.

I’ve been spending a lot of quarantine making bread. The go to has been sourdough. Sourdough is a good option because it uses natural leavening instead of a mass produced one. This is good because everyone else bought all the yeast i would normally use to make bread. The ability to make leavening from wild yeast makes sourdough a good option for times like these. I’ve been using Alex the french bread guy’s videos from youtube to learn to make the starter and the bread. Here’s a picture of the best loaf i’ve made so far, this was attempt number 10.

Pangolins are one of the strangest animals I personally have ever seen. Looking like a cross between a possum, an armadillo, and a pair of boots my aunt used to wear, they eat mainly ants and termites. Found across africa and south eastern Asia, the Pangolin has no teeth or stomach acid so its stomach is a strange series of folded muscles. Due to the lack of stomach acid the Pangolin eats dirt and sand to grind up the ants it eats. The pangolin is quite good at climbing trees, moving along in something of an inchworm pattern using its tail to grip on. When the pangolin walks, it only uses its hind legs. Despite this it leans forward far enough touch its front legs to the ground then simple chooses not to. Using its tail as a counterweight the pangolin holds its hands close to its chest like a friend about to give you some bad news. Pangolins can live for an impressive 20 years, and can be purchased for about 12 dollars.

The Mountain Goats, founded in 1991, are a california based indie/ Folk rock band. This year is a song off their 2005 EP Dilaudid. The song tells the story of a teenage boy running away from home for the day, something i’m sure we would all love to do right now. The song talks about the boy’s desire to escape his abusive household and his adventures on one good day. The chorus “I am going to make it through this year, if it kills me” was something of an anthem for me going into senior year. Originally, I my interpretation was “I’m taking a lot of hard classes this year, but i’m going to make it through”. It has become significantly more literal over the past couple weeks.

This scene in Dr. Caligari is the third murder we see within the film. With a body count like this the film may count as the first slasher movie. The scene begins with our main character going to check out the Doctor. When he sees the sleepwalker still in his cabinet he suspects nothing. But next we’re shown the sleepwalker no longer in his box, something is amiss. The sleepwalker stalks along a wall before entering a house. We’re shown Jane’s bed all in white with large windows behind it. Suddenly, the sleepwalker. Pulling out the window the sleepwalker, all in black, sulks toward the bed slowly before raising a knife over the sleeping woman. Silhouetted, the sleepwalker notices the face of the woman in the bed and is instantly in love. He grabs her. She struggles. The commotion alerts others in the house and the sleepwalker grabs the woman and escapes via the distorted rooftops. While the sleepwalker shambles away with the woman under one arm we are shown out protagonist still keeping watch over the sleeping Dr. Caligari and sleepwalker, but how can this be? The sleepwalker makes it just out of town before realizing he’s been had. He drops the woman and keeps running into the woods outside town, where his is overcome as if by a trance. The scene ends with Jane waking up at home with our protagonist. She knows it was the sleepwalker who kidnapped her, raising questions from our protagonist. The editing of this scene is slow and deliberate, letting characters move move and react to things going on. Most cuts are to show a reaction or something happening off screen. Most of the feel of the scene comes from the set design and cinematography. The slow, deliberate pacing of the film adds to the horror atmosphere, the time it takes the sleepwalker to sulk from one side of the room to the other draws more attention to the only brightly lit thing on his personage, the knife.

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari was a much more interesting movie than I expected. Often referred to as the first ever horror movie on one viewing it is clear how much of an impact this film has had on cinema history. The movie makes use of numerous tropes we still see in movies today. The movie is framed as a story one character is telling to another character with almost the entire movie taking place in a flashback. This is surprisingly reminiscent of Forrest Gump, another movie framed as a story being told by one character to another. Additionally In the end the viewer learns that the person telling the story is actually a patient at an asylum. Turns out the whole story is the ravings of a mad man, unsure of what is reality and what is a delusion. The unreliable narrator trope is another common one seen in movies today. The show Mr. Robot makes extensive use of this trope, even having season where the narrator refuses to acknowledge he is actually in prison to the viewer. Another movie that uses an even more similar trope is Shutter Island, another film where in the end it is revealed that the main character is actually in an asylum. The final clear influence I saw in this film is how much everything Tim Burton has ever made looks just like this film. Ultimately, this is a surprisingly entertaining film still totally worth watching today. The influence this film has had on cinema history is clear and in this reproduction the music is even some interesting jazz. Two thumbs up.

Once upon a time there was a man who lived in the world’s smallest house. He would wake up in the morning and put his head through the roof sitting up in bed. Then he would take a shower in a bathroom the size of a sink and get some water in a sink the size of a cup. He’d strap his car to one foot and be off to work. After spending all day enjoying the luxuries of a normal sized chair he would go back home. Then he’d head back home and crawl through his front door, and lay down in his match box bed.

Max Hawkins spent two years trying to randomize his life. He is a computer programmer who noticed he was spending his time in the same places doing the same things. In response to this he decided to write a program that would pick a random bar in San Francisco and call him an Uber there. He didn’t know where he was going till he got out of the Uber. After doing this for a while he realized it was a lot of fun. He continued to randomize different parts of his life until he was only living in a city for 2 or 3 months at a time, eating and drinking at random places, and going to random events on the nights and weekends. He said this experience was freeing, I don’t think I would enjoy it at all. I am very much a creature of habit and I think having to give that up totally would take a lot of will power on my part. Additionally the idea of a computer controlling everything I do already terrifies me and building a system that would literally make day to day decisions for me feels like a dystopian nightmare. While the code is probably pretty impressive I don’t think I want to come anywhere near Max Hawkins’ life.