Latest / onefjef / Butter But No Spatula

Transcript

Butter But No Spatula · onefjef

• 0:01
  This is episode 42 of onefjef Douglas Adams picked 42 as the answer to
• 0:08
  life, the universe and everything precisely because it was boring, and
• 0:12
  yet it keeps showing up uninvited.
• 0:15
  It appears in cosmological critical density calculations
• 0:19
  as though the math is in on the.
• 0:21
  Louis Carroll loved it enough to put it in Alice in Wonderland as a rule
• 0:24
  that banishes anyone over a mile high from court and in Japan and China.
• 0:28
  It sounds like the words for to death, which when you consider it's also the
• 0:33
  answer to everything feels less like a coincidence and more like a punchline.
• 0:37
  The universe has been sitting on for a very long time.
• 0:42
  Hello, my friends.
• 0:43
  Hello again.
• 0:45
  How is everybody doing?
• 0:46
  Are you doing well?
• 0:49
  I hope you're doing well.
• 0:49
  I hope you're thriving.
• 0:50
  As always, thriving is a word that I enjoy.
• 0:53
  I actually released this week's episode to my patron subscribers last week.
• 0:57
  As the first episode of this new series that I am calling CDMX dispatch,
• 1:04
  which is just Mexico City Dispatch.
• 1:06
  CDMX is a abbreviation for Mexico City.
• 1:10
  I was going to just make it a series for my Patreon subscribers, but I made
• 1:14
  all new cover art and came up with a title for the series, so I feel like
• 1:18
  I should release them to the public.
• 1:21
  So what I'm going to do is I'm going to release them to the
• 1:24
  patron subscribers a week early.
• 1:26
  And then the public will be getting them the week after.
• 1:29
  So that's what this week's episode's going to be.
• 1:31
  It's going to be a very short glimpse into my experience of life here in
• 1:36
  Mexico City, my first couple weeks here.
• 1:39
  The weird things, the different things, the confusing things, all the things.
• 1:44
  And I plan to release one of these every week.
• 1:47
  To my patron subscribers who've already listened to this episode.
• 1:49
  I apologize, but you are getting a new intro, so that's exciting maybe.
• 1:54
  Anyway, the point being is if you would like to hear these new CDMX
• 1:59
  dispatch episodes the week that they are happening in real time, if you will.
• 2:05
  Go to patreon.com/onefjef and sign up for as little as $5 a month.
• 2:10
  I would really appreciate it.
• 2:11
  I am trying to add new and exciting content to that Patreon subscription to
• 2:16
  make it more appealing to people because I haven't gotten a new subscriber for
• 2:20
  quite some time, and I would really like to get some new subscribers.
• 2:25
  So.
• 2:26
  Please do go patreon.com/onefjef and sign up.
• 2:31
  I would tell you what happened today in my life, but that would be
• 2:35
  going in this week's episode of CDMX dispatch, so I can't, I can't do that.
• 2:43
  Uh, I'm confusing myself and that's not good as always and forever.
• 2:50
  Thank you for listening.
• 2:52
  Thank you for being here.
• 2:55
  Here is episode one of CDMX Dispatch from last week.
• 3:04
  I am in Mexico City.
• 3:07
  It rained today.
• 3:07
  It was like a thunderstorm.
• 3:08
  It was amazing.
• 3:10
  Mexico City does good thunderstorms.
• 3:12
  I'm gonna learn that or I did learn that today.
• 3:16
  And uh, I'm here for it.
• 3:17
  I love a good thunderstorm.
• 3:19
  I'm sure that during the rainy season I will get tired of the rain, but
• 3:25
  for now it was pretty sweet too.
• 3:28
  Hear the thunder.
• 3:29
  I think it's thundery because it maybe that goes off the mountains.
• 3:32
  'cause we're kind of surrounded by mountains here.
• 3:37
  Anyway, that was pretty cool.
• 3:39
  What else?
• 3:42
  Yeah, I mean, I suppose I'm settling in.
• 3:44
  I still need to fill my refrigerator with more things.
• 3:48
  I Eating is still kind of a struggle as it is in foreign countries when you
• 3:56
  don't speak the language and don't really know where to go and so forth and so on.
• 4:03
  I'm getting better at it, but.
• 4:06
  I need to find some cheap, cheap taco stands nearby my place.
• 4:11
  Listen to that.
• 4:13
  Mexico City kick ass cars outside.
• 4:18
  Um,
• 4:21
  but yeah, I mean, I have butter now, so that's exciting.
• 4:24
  But I don't have if a spatula, so I have to get a spatula tomorrow.
• 4:28
  It's the small things that this place doesn't have.
• 4:30
  I still love the apartment, but there's just like random things
• 4:33
  that you're like, well, why do we have five pans and no spatula?
• 4:36
  Hmm.
• 4:39
  It's fine.
• 4:41
  I learned about garbage and how garbage is handled here in Mexico City.
• 4:46
  You know, in the United States, generally speaking, you have like one day a week or
• 4:52
  two days a week when the garbage people come and take your garbage cans away.
• 4:55
  You put the garbage cans out, they take them away, et cetera, et cetera.
• 5:00
  In New York City, this causes a lot of rats because people just
• 5:04
  put their garbage outside and it sits outside and the rats come.
• 5:08
  And honestly, there is a lot of garbage everywhere in New York
• 5:12
  City, and I hadn't even noticed it
• 5:18
  in all the times I've been here in Mexico City.
• 5:20
  And I'm sure maybe it's different in some of the other neighborhoods
• 5:22
  because I am in, you know, somewhat bougie neighborhoods.
• 5:25
  But.
• 5:26
  There's no garbage, and the streets are very clean.
• 5:30
  And I think it's in part because, you know, I'll often see people taking care
• 5:35
  of their particular area of the block, like storekeepers and so forth, which
• 5:39
  I find very charming and wonderful.
• 5:42
  But also because of the way the garbage is collected, you'll hear these trucks go
• 5:45
  by ringing a bell sometimes, once a day, sometimes twice a day, however often.
• 5:53
  I don't know.
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  I haven't been here long enough to know how often they come
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  by, but I have heard them.
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  And when you hear the bell of the garbage people, you take your garbage out and
• 6:02
  then you give the garbage people, I don't know, five or 10 pesos, 25, 50 cents,
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  whatever, and they take your garbage away.
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  And so there's no garbage sitting on the street corner waiting to
• 6:13
  be picked up because the garbage men take it away immediately.
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  And so you don't see as many rats.
• 6:21
  I mean, you see some rats of course, but not nearly as many,
• 6:27
  so that's interesting.
• 6:28
  It's always interesting, these things that are different from country to country,
• 6:35
  and there's so many strange things like that, like all the different,
• 6:40
  I think there are holdovers from older times, but you know,
• 6:43
  there's a guy who rides a bike around and he plays this whistle.
• 6:48
  And he is the knife sharpener, and you just know that that whistle
• 6:52
  sound is the knife sharpener guy, and he's got like a knife sharpening
• 6:56
  thing on the back of his bike.
• 6:57
  So you just like go out there, bring your knives and he
• 7:00
  sharpens your knives for you.
• 7:03
  You know, there's the comte man, the guy with the sweet potatoes, all sorts of
• 7:06
  different things that seem like holdovers to an older time, but also feel charming
• 7:13
  in today's Mexico City, to me anyway.
• 7:18
  In my first or second week here.
• 7:20
  You know, eventually these noises are gonna start to get on my nerves at some
• 7:23
  point, but for now, I'm finding them charming and I'm leaning into that.
• 7:29
  The weather here, it really has been stellar.
• 7:33
  It's basically between like 70 and 80 degrees every day at night.
• 7:40
  It goes down to maybe 60, 65.
• 7:46
  Mostly sunny, usually, sometimes some clouds.
• 7:48
  Again, they get rain today and there's just green everywhere, you know?
• 7:52
  I just love it.
• 7:54
  I went to this strange poker game on Friday that I'll tell you about,
• 7:58
  but there was a guy there from New Orleans, a professor who was an artist
• 8:02
  who was here researching some specific indigenous fabrics of some sort.
• 8:08
  Interesting guy.
• 8:09
  Before the game started, we were chatting in.
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  He said, you know, it kind of reminds me of New Orleans here
• 8:16
  and I had been thinking that.
• 8:17
  It kind of reminded me of Savannah, Georgia, which has similarities to
• 8:22
  New Orleans and yeah, it really does.
• 8:25
  The more I think about it and the more I walk around, especially at night, you
• 8:28
  know, the way the trees on some streets, the way the trees like completely cover
• 8:34
  the street and block the streetlights and.
• 8:37
  Give it kind of a very gothic, picky vibe in some places.
• 8:42
  Yeah, definitely get a Savannah Georgia vibe or a New Orleans vibe and also just
• 8:47
  the greenery, you know, all the greenery.
• 8:50
  Anyway, the poker game, I found this poker game on Facebook.
• 8:55
  It's one of these expat groups.
• 8:58
  This guy said he was having a poker game.
• 8:59
  He has it every Friday or something like that.
• 9:02
  So I messaged him and said, Hey, I'm interested, you know,
• 9:04
  'cause I used to have a poker game of course, in Columbus and.
• 9:07
  I realized that this game was gonna be different than my game in Columbus.
• 9:11
  Of course, I knew it wasn't gonna be the same.
• 9:12
  Of course, they're not gonna have a fog machine.
• 9:15
  I thought it might be social.
• 9:16
  You know, I thought it might be a place for me to meet friends, but it
• 9:20
  was a, you know, a serious poker game.
• 9:25
  The stakes weren't terrifically high.
• 9:27
  I mean, it was like a $50, a thousand peso buy-in.
• 9:31
  These people were intense poker players at the beginning
• 9:33
  when everybody was showing up.
• 9:34
  There was talking and joking around, but as soon as the game started, people
• 9:38
  were just pretty much playing poker and there was, you know, a specific dealer,
• 9:44
  a professional dealer, and we were playing out on a professional table and
• 9:48
  there was even like a woman who walked around with free drinks and snacks if
• 9:52
  you wanted them and so forth and so on.
• 9:55
  Yeah.
• 9:56
  Uh, it was not like my game in Columbus at all.
• 10:00
  Uh, not even a little bit.
• 10:02
  I mean, aside from the fact that we were using playing cards and playing the same
• 10:06
  game, but I mean at one point I paused for like 20 or 30 seconds thinking about
• 10:12
  my bet and somebody was like, do you always pause that long before you bet?
• 10:17
  And I felt like I was being called out for just thinking about my bet.
• 10:20
  'cause it was fast, you know?
• 10:25
  Anyway.
• 10:26
  It was definitely interesting.
• 10:27
  I lost about a hundred dollars and I'm not happy about that at all because I
• 10:30
  don't have a ton of money right now.
• 10:33
  But I'll chalk it up to experience because it wasn't experience for sure,
• 10:41
  and I wanted to get the new guy from New Orleans, that professor, artist guy.
• 10:46
  I wanted to get his number before he left, but he lost all of his money
• 10:49
  twice 'cause he bought in again.
• 10:51
  He lost all his money twice and then left without.
• 10:54
  Much fanfare.
• 10:55
  So the big winner was this French guy at the end of the table who had
• 11:00
  a, I mean, he must have had 10,000.
• 11:03
  20,000 pesos in front of him.
• 11:05
  Yeah, he was doing well.
• 11:07
  I was up for a while, but then I made some terrible bets and at a certain point
• 11:11
  I just wanted to leave and I thought about just cashing out with the chips
• 11:17
  that I had left, but nobody was doing that, and I didn't wanna break protocol.
• 11:21
  I thought, all right, well I'll just call this a wash and then I'll go all in on
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  a game that maybe I might not win on.
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  And I did and I lost and I left 'cause I was tired.
• 11:30
  I wanted to go home.
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  But you know, it was an experience.
• 11:37
  It was,
• 11:39
  I think I'm gonna start going to pickleball, community
• 11:42
  Pickleball games here.
• 11:43
  There's like a group of.
• 11:46
  There's a bunch of groups of people who play pickleball like every
• 11:48
  single day at a court right near me.
• 11:50
  So I might start checking that out.
• 11:52
  And I think the yoga mat I ordered arrived at the place
• 11:57
  that I have to go pick it up at.
• 11:58
  So I'll probably go there tomorrow and pick that up and start going to yoga.
• 12:02
  And that'll feel good because I think my body's starting to acclimate.
• 12:06
  You know, last night before I went to bed, I was looking into, well,
• 12:09
  I was asking, you know, AI about.
• 12:13
  The effects of the body and how you adjust to living at 7,500 feet or so,
• 12:18
  whatever it is here, you start producing more red blood cells to adjust to this.
• 12:24
  And I was like, well, how does that affect the body producing more red blood cells?
• 12:30
  And it apparently makes the blood thicker because you're
• 12:32
  producing more red blood cells.
• 12:34
  And so clotting, I guess, is more of an issue, but not a big one.
• 12:39
  But really not a lot of bad.
• 12:44
  I always thought that there'd be a trade off.
• 12:47
  You know, your body's producing more red blood cells, so it's
• 12:49
  producing less of something else, but apparently that's not the case.
• 12:53
  It's just adjusting to the altitude and it also checks out because I
• 12:59
  have been sleeping pretty well, not great, but I appetite has been
• 13:06
  low, and my energy has been weird.
• 13:09
  It's getting better, but.
• 13:11
  Apparently it takes two to four weeks, five weeks to really adjust.
• 13:14
  So, so, yeah.
• 13:16
  But it is a thing for sure.
• 13:19
  'cause it's like a mile and a half up, you know?
• 13:20
  That's a hike.
• 13:22
  That's a hike.
• 13:24
  And I did get one air purifier from Amazon, but I'm not happy with it.
• 13:29
  So I am returning it and getting a better one.
• 13:32
  I don't know if it'll make much of a difference.
• 13:34
  It's an Amazon basic air purifier and.
• 13:39
  I don't know why I don't trust it to be purifying the air well, but I don't, so
• 13:45
  I'm returning it and getting a better one because I feel like air quality in
• 13:50
  my apartment is one of the more important things for my life here to be good
• 13:56
  and comfortable in all those things.
• 14:00
  You know, I have been reading the news to my chagrin and.
• 14:05
  I am really thinking about not doing that anymore.
• 14:11
  When I was here a year ago, I kind of did that.
• 14:14
  I kind of 'cause it, it, it was a different time 'cause it was like right
• 14:16
  after he'd gotten inaugurated again.
• 14:18
  But I feel like I look at the New York Times and it's kind of the same version
• 14:23
  of the same story like every day now.
• 14:26
  And I don't mean to trivialize it in that way.
• 14:30
  But it kind of does, right?
• 14:31
  It seems like just, oh, war continues, more people dying,
• 14:36
  bombs, et cetera, et cetera.
• 14:38
  And again, it's not affecting me.
• 14:43
  I mean, gas prices, okay, airline tickets are more expensive.
• 14:47
  But I did reach out to my friend from New York.
• 14:51
  I had a friend in New York that I met at Sundance, Saba, who is
• 14:55
  Iranian, and her family's from Tehran.
• 14:58
  I just reached out to her to find out if she was all right and she got back
• 15:04
  to me and said she is in Copenhagen, but her family is all still in Tehran,
• 15:11
  and I don't know, that's gotta be hard.
• 15:13
  I mean, I would want to get my family out of there because I don't know,
• 15:19
  it feels like nuclear weapons are not
• 15:24
  out of the picture here.
• 15:28
  And I don't know how that plays out, but I'm glad I'm in Mexico
• 15:32
  because I don't feel like Mexico is a prime target for anything really.
• 15:40
  But my friend is.
• 15:43
  Okay.
• 15:44
  And that's good.
• 15:45
  That's good to know.
• 15:47
  But yeah, I, maybe I'll just delete the New York Times app.
• 15:52
  Maybe I'll delete.
• 15:54
  All the news apps and just stop paying attention to that shit because it does
• 15:57
  take up brain space and I don't need that.
• 16:00
  What good does it do me to know what's going on, what horrible
• 16:04
  things are going on in the world now?
• 16:06
  I mean, of course it's disaster porn.
• 16:08
  It's, you know, catastrophe porn, whatever it is, it's hard to look away, right?
• 16:15
  It's like the sore tooth.
• 16:16
  You can't stop touching it with your tongue, but it can't be
• 16:18
  good for you mentally to be processing all of this darkness.
• 16:23
  Right on a daily basis.
• 16:26
  And I don't really get anxious about it or, or angry really occasionally.
• 16:33
  But I do understand that that anger and anxiety doesn't do any good.
• 16:37
  It doesn't change anything.
• 16:38
  It doesn't fix anything.
• 16:40
  It just affects my mental health and I just don't need that.
• 16:46
  I wanna use that brain space for something else.
• 16:48
  I wanna make music or.
• 16:50
  Make more podcasts or whatever it is, look for a fucking job.
• 16:53
  You know, all these things that this toxic, toxic news
• 17:01
  is distracting me from.
• 17:05
  And, and even then, I still won't know if it's true.
• 17:07
  I mean, I do know the mainstream media is full of shit for the most part.
• 17:10
  I mean, of course they're right on some things, but the fact that
• 17:15
  there's some rah rying going on.
• 17:18
  On these mainstream media channels, like pro-war stuff?
• 17:22
  No, absolutely not.
• 17:26
  Absolutely not.
• 17:28
  Although I suppose you have to toe the party line and the party
• 17:31
  is the United States, so, and you gotta make the dear leader happy.
• 17:35
  So I guess you have to rah rah the war somewhat just so you can
• 17:41
  appease the dear leader and not lose your license or get whatever.
• 17:47
  It's such a fucking cloud of darkness over this world right now.
• 17:52
  And I don't wanna sit in that dark cloud of darkness.
• 17:55
  I wanna,
• 17:58
  I wanna sit outside of that cloud of darkness because you can, you don't
• 18:02
  have to sit in that cloud of darkness.
• 18:04
  You can choose to sit outside of it, and I guess it's probably harder in
• 18:10
  the United States to sit outside of it because it's kind of all around you there.
• 18:14
  But.
• 18:16
  I am in Mexico City and it's very easy for me to just sit outside of that cloud.
• 18:22
  All I gotta do is stop opening the damn New York Times app or whatever it is.
• 18:34
  Uh, there's some more thunder.
• 18:37
  I think we're gonna get another storm here.
• 18:43
  I hope it's a quick one.
• 18:44
  I gotta go for a walk.
• 18:47
  And I do realize that a lot of people are being affected directly
• 18:51
  by what's going on in the world.
• 18:54
  Is it more acute now?
• 18:56
  Yes, of course.
• 18:57
  It's more acute now, but that doesn't mean that you paying attention is
• 19:04
  going to make it better at all.
• 19:09
  Right.
• 19:11
  It's just gonna make it worse.
• 19:12
  Well, no, it's not gonna make it worse.
• 19:13
  It's just gonna make you worse.
• 19:16
  It's gonna give you anxiety, probably.
• 19:18
  It's gonna give you anger, whatever it is, fear, all the emotions
• 19:22
  that, that I think this government wants you to have, frankly.
• 19:25
  I mean, I think it's them winning, you know?
• 19:29
  And then people would say, so you just want to give up.
• 19:32
  You just wanna throw your hands up in the air and say whatever's
• 19:35
  gonna happen is gonna happen.
• 19:37
  What do you suggest?
• 19:40
  Name something that you would do, that you would suggest that I do that's
• 19:44
  actually gonna make a difference in what's going on right now.
• 19:51
  I'll wait.
• 19:53
  No.
• 19:55
  Call your Congress person, please.
• 19:57
  I gimme a break.
• 20:01
  If it makes you feel better, great.
• 20:03
  But I guarantee that the congressperson is not changing his votes.
• 20:08
  Based on the number of phone calls he's getting about a
• 20:12
  particular issue, the fix is in.
• 20:16
  My friends, the fix has been in for years.
• 20:21
  Our government has been captured by money,
• 20:26
  and I don't think that there's anything that you or I or
• 20:28
  anyone can really do about it.
• 20:33
  Yeah, I realize that there's shining lights of sorts out
• 20:36
  there, your James Telecos, your Bernie Sanders, and so forth.
• 20:42
  But these people are few and far between.
• 20:46
  Most of the politicians have been completely captured by money,
• 20:49
  or at least partially captured.
• 20:52
  And when money controls the system, we don't live in a democracy.
• 20:58
  We haven't lived into democracy for years though, because money's
• 21:01
  been controlling the system for probably as long as I've been alive.
• 21:07
  To different degrees, to increasing degrees as I've gotten older,
• 21:11
  whereas now it's completely controlled outwardly, openly.
• 21:16
  The bribery is now just like part of the thing.
• 21:21
  Yeah, things are as bad as they have been, I think in my lifetime.
• 21:28
  For sure.
• 21:31
  This is in a way the inevitable outcome of the last 50 years of neoliberalism.
• 21:37
  When you put a dollar sign on everything, then of course the government's
• 21:42
  going to become corrupted by money.
• 21:46
  Anyway, I wish I had answers, but I don't.
• 21:49
  The only answers I have are to do something in your community
• 21:53
  that'll make you feel better and help the community around you.
• 21:58
  It'll have a direct impact on the world that you exist in, because
• 22:03
  trying to affect the global politics, national politics, all of that, I just
• 22:11
  don't think that there is a way to do that that is going to be effective.
• 22:20
  But if you disagree, I'm happy to hear your, your rebuttal, your, your solution.
• 22:27
  Should we email onefjefpod@gmail.com or leave a comment on
• 22:32
  this post in the Patreon?
• 22:34
  I'd love to have a dialogue.
• 22:37
  Anyway, enough about that.
• 22:42
  I'm gonna go over to a friend's place and play some music tonight,
• 22:44
  so maybe I'll just wrap this up.
• 22:46
  Maybe I'll just call this the first one.
• 22:48
  25 minutes.
• 22:49
  That's pretty good.
• 22:51
  Thank you Patreon subscribers for sticking with me.
• 22:57
  Continuing to support the podcast.
• 23:02
  I really do appreciate it and please do tell your friends and family to
• 23:07
  listen to the podcast and per perhaps support it because still this is my,
• 23:12
  my source of income, which isn't a lot.
• 23:15
  I'm trying to figure out ways to increase that source of income from
• 23:18
  this, because really the dream is to make a living off of this thing,
• 23:22
  which is a difficult dream to achieve.
• 23:27
  I believe, I believe in the meantime, although I do have to get some, some roar.
• 23:34
  But yes, thank you very much.
• 23:35
  I hope you're all doing very well and if you have any comments about anything
• 23:39
  in this podcast or about anything you've heard, please just leave a comment in
• 23:43
  the um, comment section on this post and maybe we can start a dialogue
• 23:47
  because I'd love to hear from you.
• 23:50
  Until then, thanks be well.
• 23:54
  I hope you're thriving.
• 23:55
  Continue to thrive.
• 23:57
  Put your phone down.
• 23:59
  Put your phone down.
• 24:02
  Very good, Jeffrey.