The Dump

Since I could tell stories I wanted to be a writer. I wrote a lot as a kid. A lot a lot. I met Mya, my now girlfriend, because I wanted in on the story she was writing. I won writing contests. I won superlatives. I once spent a year writing for an hour every day, plus reading books about writing in my spare time. I took the highest level English classes I could get my hands on. I was an editor for my school’s literary magazine. I became obsessed with structure and how to subvert it and the way things sound and how this all impacts our reading experience on a subconscious level. I wanted to major in English since I knew what a major was. I am in my final semester of college and have taken two English classes. One I dropped the second week, the other I got a D- in. I am not a writer. Yes, I love storytelling. Yes, I love studying the form. Yes, I will way overthink it and never actually put anything on the page. What I like is taking others’ drafts and making it whole. I like fixing spel...

I’ve been closing tabs recently. My phone is always sitting at the maximum number of tabs (it’s 500 in Safari btw — when you open a new one, another tab randomly closes. No clue about Brave, my preferred browser, though. It doesn’t tell me and I don’t mind that.) and my laptop is typically full of tabs that I’m scared to close so they serve as a reminder that I eventually have to come back to that task. I’ve been closing tabs though. I’ve been finishing things, like a lot, and not needing their tabs anymore. I’ve been reading books digitally and annotating them and finishing chapters and saving the file and closing the tabs. I’ve been finishing scripts and recording them and closing that tab and the thesaurus tab and the transcript tab and the fact checking tab and all the other ones. I finish my game of Tetris and close the tab so I don’t find the tab open and start playing again without thinking about it later. I close the Brightspace tab when I’m not doing work and come back to it l...

Fuck. Last semester I took a screenwriting class. The nightmare that is having a story with deadlines. Fuck no. Fuck off. Let it grow and twist naturally as it has for nine years already. I had to take an incomplete, in no small part due to Arcane stealing half my plot lines halfway through the semester and my absolute refusal to make anything that’s been done before. And today is the deadline. I am unwavered in my hatred for writing deadlines. But as it stands I have an F in this class. This class that I took because my mom started tearing up when she found out I’d abandoned my lifelong dream of becoming a writer and instead taken an interest in film. As David Lynch probably once said, fuck language, I want psychosexual nonsense and also to work with Kyle MacLachlan. Anyways this is my accountability post that I’ll be writing and updating throughout the day. It will hopefully keep me on track and away from rewatching tick, tick… BOOM!  instead of writing. Again. 12:35 PM I have n...

I’m pulling most of this post from a paper I did a while ago on personal taste. I should start off by saying I have both a chart and a triple axis graph I use to determine how I feel about a movie, tv show, play, or musical. I refer to them both constantly, consciously or not.  The graph began with two axes, rating movies by their technical value and entertainment value. Technical value comes from the skills and technique put into making a show. Entertainment value comes simply from how fun it is to watch. For example, Oppenheimer was technically well executed. Entertainment wise, I thought it was incredibly slow and boring. On the other end of the spectrum, Sharknado is a great time to watch, but is far from a technical masterpiece. While a show may have excellent entertainment or technical value, it doesn’t necessarily have both.  Later, I added the third axis, where shows are rated by how well they accomplish what they set out to do. Occasionally, a work will be both...

I’ve been thinkin’ about this Tiktok since I saw it yesterday: It got me curious about whether “right to bear arms” includes grenades and after some research I realized it’s illegal to kill people with any kind of weapon anyways so like. I don’t think that matters here. By the way— from what I understand from a very brief search, no, grenades cannot be carried because they wouldn’t be carried for self defense, aren’t in common use, and qualify as a “dangerous and unusual weapon”. It should be noted that the same does not apply to AR-15s. This is incredibly arbitrary and seemingly vibe-based. Unrelated but it’s messed up that the Blogger app won’t let you upload videos for free but if you just switch to your browser it’s like Oh Okay :)

How do you make an introductory post to your friends who already know you? I guess the blog is what’s new here, so that’s what I’m introducing instead of myself. ”The Dump” comes from an old journal I used to keep where I would “dump” everything — diary entries, doodles, meal tracking, random scraps of paper I’d collected, etc. It was a multimedia scrapbook of whatever I wanted or needed to get down. I’m hoping to bring the same philosophy to this blog, but with the added elements of audio, video, links, coding, etc. I love dipping my toes in as many mediums as possible, so I shall not be able to contain myself. This blog will largely be me exercising the compulsion to create, to share, to save, and to get what’s stuck in my head out so it leaves me alone. I welcome you along for the ride. Anyways, if you’re reading this but don’t know me as a person, I’m Jay! I use all pronouns (and encourage you to get freaky with it). I am obsessed with film, hamsters, and queer horror. Something is...

I recently checked out the podcast Rumble Strip after it was recommended in class. I found a recent episode about Forrest Foster, who is a recurring character. I wanted the background to understand the episode and ended up listening to every episode he's been in that night. He's a very blunt, practical-minded farmer who reminds me a lot of my grandfather. The show's documented several difficult moments in his life -- there's one episode that takes place  as he's building his wife's coffin. Below are the episodes he's in, in chronological order. Search for them on your podcast platform of choice. (I attempted links to the show’s website but they kept breaking.) Forrest Foster, Independent Dairyman — 03/04/2022 Nature's Top Deck, with Forrest Foster — 12/02/2022 Forrest Foster Lays Karen to Rest — 09/04/2023 Forrest and I Sit in the Truck and Talk About Pain — 12/10/2023 Sugaring With Forrest Foster — 04/25/2024 Forrest is Getting Done...for now. — 11/04...