ean's conundrums ch. 5 | thanatos

9/29/23

ahoy! i'm back on the grind bringing you nothing but the latest in greatest in ean's conundrums. in the last 2 weeks i've grappled with both soup cans, visitors, my own mortality! fun times indeed. but let's get the boring stuff out of the way first. 

firstly, my studies have been going well. my classes have finally taken off the training wheels [except for english. god i hate english.] so we're really diving into the fun stuff!! for my circuit analysis class, we've finally started dealing with series-parallel circuits. its a bit of a doozy to wrap my head around redrawing and simplifying them with sooo many numbers to keep track of but. i have faith in myself!! i was one of the only people to get a perfect score on our parallel circuits unit so i can totally handle it. in my microcomputer hardware class, we've finally finalized our pc builds!! we'll be rockin current gen ryzen cpus with 32gb of ram and i could not be more excited lol. we do have to buy graphics cards ourselves but i havent settled on one yet. but this means that i'll hopefully have a new kickass pc build by thanksgiving when my family comes to visit!! 

speaking of visitors, i finally got my first out of towner!!! it was my bestest friend who i haven't seen since june before i moved. he lives out in washington state, but his sister had a business trip to st. louis so they made the drive out to see me on one of their free days!! it was nice getting to see him again. we're like super gay but in the platonic way [we have matching bi pride bracelets] so its always nice to have somebody who i really feel like i can be ME around. we hung out and listened to vinyl and i got to meet 2 of his bajillion siblings so it was fun, even if short-lived!

anyways, in terms of conundrums the harvest has been bountiful. lady luck's horseshoe of misfortune always seems to ring around my neck. the other day, i was shopping at dollar general because they had remodeled our local one! they have a full on PRODUCE section now its awesome!! it means i dont have to drive all the way to town to get the handful of fresh fruits n veggies that i need when cooking for one. anyways, they had a sale on canned soup! so i picked up a whole canoodle of them [please laugh im really proud of that worldplay]. that night i decided i wanted some beef and vegetable stew for dinner bc it's been a minute since i've had beef stew! then i realized i didnt own a can opener. i remembered reading that you could open a can with a spoon by just. rubbing the outer rim of it for a while until the spoon gradually broke through before pulling it up. about 5 minutes in i realized i lacked the patience for that and started trying to stab it with a screwdriver. when THAT didnt work, i used a pair of pliers to create an opening just barely large enough for the soupy goodness to exit through. then when i was looking for a rag to clean off my multi-tool i realized that i had a can opener hiding under my rags. whoops. the soup kind of sucked too. 

when you work at a museum that specializes in family history and genealogy, the concept of death naturally comes up quite a bit. there's that one saying about everyone having two deaths: the first when your heart stops, and the second when your name is said for the last time. my job is to prolong that second death for as many people as i possibly can. as such, i've kind of started hyperfixating on my own. i realized its been subconsciously shining through everything i do: i'm turning a vintage record player into an heirloom furniture piece, i'm going above and beyond at the museum to get my name in the newspaper again to ensure my name stays in recorded history. being forgotten and being remembered are funny things. sometimes the idea of certain parts of me being forgotten and lost to time brings me a really nice peace. other times i'm terrified that the good parts won't be remembered. even before death, too. how will i be remembered by those who i don't actively engage with anymore? will i be reduced to nothing more than a single sentence, an old friend, just another ex lover, or even brought up at all? it's scary.

i've decided that when i die, i want to be cremated and for my ashes to be pressed into a vinyl with all of the most ean songs i can think of. i've always been prone to defining myself by my music taste, for better or for worse, but i think that'd be a really interesting way to prolong my second death. like cmon there's no way my great great grandchildren would forget their ol' pops if he printed his earthly remains onto a vinyl with the bee gees on it. i really like the physicality that vinyl brings to something as meaningful as music, and i'd like to inherit some of that soulful physicality even after i'm gone. don't get me wrong, i have no intentions of dying anytime soon. it's just nice to have contingency plans, yknow? anyways here's the vinyl soundtrack.

on that wonderfully cheery note, that's all i have for this entry!! it's finally midnight so i can clock off of work lol. i mostly do this on friday nights when i work before close so that way i can stay busy and ride the clock. hopefully i have more colorful conundrums to share next time.

wish me luck,

ean s