HOH Magazine: January 2021 Issue

Welcome back, bitches!

New Year, New Issue!

Welcome back! I'm your new Oprah, yet again! Snatching the mantle for smithing my opinions and thoughts into self-help (or just media recommendations) once more! Read on for the new and renewed HOH Magazine!!

Personally, I am very excited by the opportunity a new year brings. Which at this point...under the circumstances...is only really the prospect of self-improvement. But hey who doesn't like that?*

This tweet can't age poorly if we choose to recycle it

I love New Year's Day. A routine, scheduled, socially acceptable time to slough off anything you don't want and start something you do. Yes, some might see it as arbitrary. Very deep, bro. So is Valentine's Day: you can gift flowers, chocolate, and poems any day of the year! So why amp it up for one particular day in February? Well, because having a societally-decided saturation point is kind of the point. It's celebratory. Celebrations give a special spotlight to particular, ordinary & everyday things for a fabulous allotted time. Happy birthday, by the way!

Once culture agrees upon a date, a celebration is no longer arbitrary; it becomes meaningful. So I relish the energy that New Year's Day brings. Once you understand how a holiday works, if you're clever enough you can use it as a spring-board.

You heard that right, I'm a dateless wonder making a vehemently pro-Valentine's Day argument. If my 9th grade self could see me now, he'd be very confused, and quick to complain... but hopefully he'd admit to admire my point. Otherwise, I could dress him down as the misogynistic self-hating reprobate twerp he didn't even know he was. That's personal growth, baby! Happy New Year! I love you!

Can you feel it in the air? I can. It's more palpable to me than the Christmas spirit is, which has all but been lost to me over the aging years. But the New Years spirit always resonates. New Years is my Fourth of July. I can declare my independence from who I was and what I've been. The routines and habits I want to leave at the curb. The proverbial tidying up of the soul. I can enter a new year by crafting a new me. The clay is a little softer around this time; I'm excited to get back to molding it.

Whether you leave the fridge open too long, or if you keep the lights on when you leave a room, or even if you have an inkling of a suspicion that you run tap water a tad longer than you should...this is the chance for you to shed that. Brush twice a day! Try flossing!** Do yoga stretches in the morning! Whatever it is you want to do, start trying. Perhaps a bit antithetical to the timeliness of New Years, (we'll get to that) but this quote Gift of Gab in Watsky's Everything Turns Gold really does it for me: "time is an illusion, all of it's within you now."

Day 1 is today: start fresh. Isn't that liberating? Speaking of start fresh, I think I'd better front-load this issue with everything any reader of this blog needs resolved: The result of the 2020 American presidential election. Do I know? Yes. I do now.

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It was Tuesday, Day 295 of a quarantine made mandatory by the dissolution of a pandemic response team by some vacant-headed con-man bitch and let's never forget that. Anyway: that rat-fucker was one of two possible candidates for presidency, a decision going against all of God's mercies. But, after getting strong as fuck, mentally and spiritually, I knew it was time to ask my dad if that arrogant dog-shit got more votes than a man who was qualified for the position, who did not dissolve a pandemic response team which lead to killing 450,000+ people for no reason, and who was qualified for the position.

But hey, it's about policy and platform, right?

...

I had developed an iTunes playlist that was specifically designed for bravery. Composed of songs that swirled appropriately through my mentality during the pupation and emergence, as well as stuff that would specifically empower me to face my fears. A lot of Watsky and Foxy Shazam, a whole stretch of the Swiss Army Man soundtrack, and a great many other songs that I could listen to on shuffle, on loop, to align the doorknob of my mind with the door that would lead out of my chrysalis.

As the arbitrary deadline I gave myself approached, one song stood out as "the one" to listen to last, right before going outside with a cardboard box and a baseball bat to beat it up with for a silly video. That song was Blackway and Black Caviar's What's Up Danger from the Spider-Verse soundtrack:

On January 5th, 2021 at approximately 4:50pm, I pressed play and brought my headphones to the basement. There had been a couch recently removed, so it was a flat carpeted space wherein I could stand in the dark, facing the projector screen, and do this:

George Watsky's illustrated PLACEMENT lyric book

I projected my gigantic fear-beast in front of me in the dark and stared it down until I could squish him on the coffee table. What's Up Danger energized me exactly as I needed it to, so I leapt up the stairs! Stepped outside to face the sky of the setting sun! Readied my box and bat! Phoned in to retrieve, simply, the binary result: "Did the bad outcome happen or did the good outcome happen?" I was finally in the position of mental fortitude to hear the bad outcome come true. "It's as simple as that."

"The good outcome is what resulted from the election."

...Have to say I was not expecting that.

But, as I wrote, I did not need to prepare a reaction for our idiotic populous making the thuddingly-obvious decision. I didn't know how to describe my reaction. The relief didn't come right away, but something lifted off my shoulders over the next few hours, for sure. I had psyched myself up so much to be this unflappable powerful being in the face of certain death of insurmountable evil...and I didn't need to be. How wonderful!

A bit anti-climactic, but that's a good thing.

Here's the critical thing: all that strength is not for nothing. Now, I am more than prepared to fight against a political opponent with actually some sliver of a human heart. You can't fight republicans because they live in an alternate reality, but democrats go above and beyond the bare minimum by acknowledging basic laws of science and math and shit, so there's some ground to push them on. Whether they "do better" is up to them...unfortunately. But as far as my sphere of control goes, I'm ready to kick some fuckin' ass...proverbially of course.

Even a month later, I'm still not sure how I felt, in that moment. What is it like to come out of a four-year shell shock? Well, over the past month I'd say that a lot of my day-to-day triggers have begun to fall by the wayside. I'm no longer superstitious about the colors red or orange, or the number 45 (in any permutation.) Ditto 16 and 20, which were mainly anxiety-inducing preceding and during the election. Also around that time, so pretty much all throughout the cocoon, I made sure that when I stepped from, say, one sidewalk square's surface to another, the last foot to touch it was my left and not my right. That's completely a non-thing, now.

I'll still prefer to use the phrases 'beat out' or 'dominate' or whatever synonym best applies in lieu of 'trump.' That word is as dead as the swastika. But that aside, these few symbolic wolves of bad omen ultimately no longer have their black hides or protruding fangs. They're back to neutral. Orange and red are colors I quite like, thank you very much.

I am however still on edge/constantly low-key pissed off, with a 'woke' background noise enveloping my consciousness: I can't help being disheartened that trump did not lose in a massive landslide.*** I will always remember that 49% of this brain-damaged country voted [often again] for a nazi who killed 450,000+ people.

Yet, somehow, those people are shocked and upset. Almost like an election they were certain about didn't go their way... Well, while I can't really sum up my emotional reaction to learning the election results, my intellectual reaction, to those people in particular, maxes out at two simple words:

"Cry, bitch."

That message blankets the entire spectrum: from the dumb loser himself, if his neural pathways for the function of 'crying' haven't been completely eroded by his USD upbringing; to the infant child of some dumb supporter, who probably has done a lot of that by virtue of infancy, but may continue to for many years unless they get away from their life's unfortunate starting point.

Cry, bitch.

Cry. I had to. Oh, let me tell you. I HAD to. Boy howdy. Sometimes it feels good to cry, but not so much when you're absolutely certain that your life is going to end at 24 before you've even kissed someone or made a feature-length film, all because a woman is less appealing than a putrid, racist elephantiasis of America's billionaire death cult.

(Well...to be fair, having a vagina and emails is pretty damning, you must admit. Can you imagine if someone with those qualities became president? No, I will never let that go, why do you ask?)

Pictured: a bitch, crying

So cry, bitch. Please. You won't die; I sure as fuck didn't. There! I'm officially more heroic than I thought I was; that right there is my offering, a quantum of solace: reading that sentence might ease those tears a little. My one acknowledgment to how we're not so different; a shred of empathy from my examined life to your self-sabotaged one. I went above and beyond to offer a word of kindness to the worst people in the world. That's my Jesus-ing for the day. Cry, because you'll be okay.

(Bitch.)

This man, these people, put me in a box of noxious gas that arrested me for four entire years while the guffs with the cuffs pretended to bluff "We can't do anything, wahhh!" Well, now I, along with every other competent voter, get to put you in a box.

Immeasurable catharsis

We'll unpack that image a little later. Just let it be forever known that the only branch of government that could stop trump, and did stop trump, was We the People of the United States. Voters, suffering a long train of abuses and usurpations. Staring down the barrel of a design to reduce us under absolute Despotism (which, demonstrably enough, killed 450,000+ of us, by the fucking way I will never let this go, either.) Nevertheless, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our future security. ...Which in this case boiled down to voting for a different old white republican man, just with a blue coat of paint. But so be it. I will always take baby steps forward over a backwards dash off of a cliff I didn't ask to be born so close to.

No, I don't think this song swayed any voters;

I made it mainly for historical record, to prove myself.

I've still yet to trawl through the day-and-date reactions of everyone I usually follow on the internet, and... I probably won't, to be honest. The moment has passed. But it's worth noting that so far, I haven't seen much in the way of joy for Biden's win. Sorry, ya creepy grandpa. At most, I see merely relief, an elation that the asshole has finally been knocked the fuck out.

I haven't seen a single one of my friends thrilled by the historic election of a [black[/Asian]/]woman vice-president, either. I don't give much of a shit, myself. For one thing: you could invent a new kind of pastry, and gift it to me on a silver platter, but if I've had cat feces force-fed down my throat for four years just because I was naïve enough to take a second helping of "First Black President Soufflé" back in 2012, I don't care what that new pastry tastes like: the novelty of that flavor, or any of its palatable qualities, will be wasted on a victim-tongue of poop-mouth.

And for another thing she's a fucking cop. Content of character >>>>>> color of skin, I think someone said once.

Shitposter's rendition

Funnily enough, one of the few details that led me to deduce that The Worst Had Happened, was that people in my neighborhood still had their Biden/Harris signs up well after Thanksgiving and even Christmas. Even to this day! My thought was, naturally: "Well, you don't keep that sign up if he won."

If he won, you can stop pretending you like him, and start readying to fight him on every single thing to try making him act as progressively as is possible. You keep those up if he lost as a protest so your neighbors know you're one of the good ones who tried before the end came. Like lamb's blood for God to know which houses to pass over. ...But I admit I'm limited to my own perspective. Maybe they're genuine fans. I suppose his campaign needed a few of those. You know, republicans.

Well I thank those neighbors anyway, as my preparation for the worst was what I needed to chase and achieve as much as I could, in order to come out of that cocoon. My blog posts chronicling my thoughts from that two-month period can be found here: [1/2/3/4] They're all too long: too rambly, too stream-of-consciousness, bloated and indulgent to an excessive degree. Valid criticisms. Still, it was primarily for me. To get as many words out as I could while in such a novel circumstance. A portrait of my mind in a once-ever condition. The only person on the planet with a computer and a TV that didn't know the news. Not to sound so vain as to my self-importance... But show me someone else like that. And besides, this is my blog.

Reading those posts again now, scrawled inside the walls of the empty chrysalis as I peer back inside one more time, the one thing I cannot say is that they're pointless in retrospect. They bore vital emotional fruit. I'm stronger, now. Look at my wings.

It's very, very important to build that personal strength and equip those tools, gain that confidence, etc. I'm both better for it, and thankful I do not need to use them to their full extent. It'll help for the storms ahead. You should have more lifeboats than you have passengers. You want to stick your 8x11 picture frame on wall strips that can hold up to five pounds. You don't want to have to rely on the security guards in your building, but you're glad they're there in case the shit goes down.

Which, SPEAKING OF...

Now that's a segway

Okay... Not to create too much of an implication that I believe trump and I are mirror opposites, or "arch-enemies" or anything. Sure, we're polar-opposites both morally and personality-wise, but so are loads of my friends; I keep good company and great minds think alike. And besides, I'm not that vain, and I'm not that important. I keep my ego in check whenever possible.

However.

I mean... I'm jus' sayin'... What with me finding out the election results on January 5th... it's kind of exactly like when Peter Parker gets his spider powers and falls asleep, and at the exact same time, unrelated, Norman Osborn gets hopped up on the Goblin juice.

I, mild-mannered David Hoh, received my Insect-Based Metaphor For Personal Maturity, and the very next day donald 'rape allegations' trump went "back to formula" by holding another ego-fluffing rally. Though this one was distinguished by the way he personally, and with his sons and lawyer, turned loose a headless chicken stumbling down to Capitol Hill, to...well...roost.

"If I lived with you, I wouldn't have been able to not
tell you what was going on. It's fucking insane"

I repeat, I'm not that vain nor that important...although isn't that just what the mirror opposite of a dumb idiot-loser who is apparently very important (and shouldn't be) would be???

I'm not sayin'...

...I' jus' sayi'.

I actually didn't call my dad until the 11th, after asking that he catch up on my side of the world by reading the four cocoon posts. Then we did a video call and he got to assume the role of personal news anchor, which he relished a little bit. Although he didn't like my constant flippant attitude and gibing asides. With fair reason, it turned out, by the time he finally got to the month of January 6th.

But that was my ultimate first reaction: the chickens came home to roost. That phrase probably hasn't entered my head in about five years and yet it leapt off the tip of my tongue like a graceful diver.

My dad and I recorded that 6-hour conversation, and I'm crazy enough to take on the task of editing it into podcast form: my true, official emergence from my Total Eclipse of the News. My expanded, real-time thoughts will be contained there (not that it will make this issue any shorter ha ha ha) and I will add a hyperlink here when that becomes available.

Yeah no shit

To rewind a bit, to five days before the 11th:

For me, I woke up on the holiday of Epiphany, Wednesday, January 6th at 1:00pm Central Time. Unbeknownst to me, this was 2:00pm Eastern Time: the nation's capitol had been breached by demonstrators and overrun by patriots.

But for me, it was just Wednesday. Actually, the first Wednesday of the month. Which meant I awoke to, yes, the monthly test of the tornado siren system.

(34,627 hours is nearly exactly four years)

But this time, for the first time in literally four years, I was not afraid of the sound. I knew it was only a test of the tornado warning system, which is always scheduled for 1:00pm on the first Wednesday of every month in Minnesota. That day, it did not trigger in me a post-Cold War Cold War fear that I am wayyyy to young to even feel.†

I stayed cozy in bed, with restful head, and got up by 1:37pm. We had a president again; I did not need to collapse to crisis by tornado siren testing anymore.

Back to January 11th:

Lemme tell ya, it's kinda weird learning about something that was, to directly quote my dad, "worse than 9/11," a week after the fact. This thing had no effect on me, yet it is a black stain at the end of a dark chapter of American history. It was already history by the time I was hearing about it.

So then I felt...not exactly Fear Of Missing Out, but I had a certain "Oh wow I missed this happening live, I kinda wish I hadn't" emotion. When I examined why that feeling occurred, I realized that what I actually "missed out on" was experiencing terror from a group of fooled idiots who don't even deserve my attention. Hearing it after the fact is still ghastly, but without in-the-moment fright of "what is going to happen in the next ten minutes?" because 'the next ten minutes' were as much in the past as their preceding ten. I knew what happened and that it had a limited length of time. An afternoon of America's atrophied affluent acidity actually accruing actionable abomination. An insurrection of dunces, just for one day.

You could almost call it silly if it weren't so scary. On the other hand, it would be scarier if it weren't also so stupid.

It sucks that it was scary at all, because boy howdy was it so fucking stupid. This is the logical slip-n-slide that circles the square for why my reaction to the news of January 6th borders on 'smugness' and 'irreverence' just as much as it resides in 'appalled.'

(I won't say 'shocked and appalled' because every single God Damned day after November 8th, 2016, I have been incapable of being shocked by anything that donald 'kindergarten comprehension skills' trump would or could do. No aftershocks after that initial quake; I'd been calling him a nazi since before the electoral college evacuated its bowels into my soul. You can easily identify the phonies across the globe by them revealing that they were "shocked" or "surprised" or "can't believe" that he would do "X, Y or Z" on any day after the 8th. No shit, Sherlock: he's a stupid, solipsistic nazi. If you had listened to anybody with half a brain, you would have nothing to be surprised by. Fuck your astonishment.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah, so I was both appalled and irreverent, and borderline smug towards the news of Jan 6th. While it's reasonable to assume that hearing about it as it was happening would've invoked a larger quantity of genuine fear, I suspect that the feeling would have dominated, but not silenced, my irreverence. Irreverence is basically a tattoo on my forehead at this point. I've been saying "Well what did you expect" about X, Y, and Z for 1,461 days, I doubt I would have spared such a remark for one more.

Because it would not have surprised me to learn that a solipsistic nazi wanted to steal the election he lost for himself, because he only cares about himself. The behavior lined up perfectly with my understanding of his character, an that of his worshippers. Impossible for me to be taken aback by such a behavior. What would have surprised me is if he hugged his son.

Actually the two things that did surprise me were that Twitter actually banned his account, and that some companies vowed ("vowed") to cease making donations to the republican nazi party. Surprising actions, unsurprisingly too little, too late. Like Joe Biden, be content but not celebratory. Better late than never???? Well, not for 450,000+ people, it ain't.

This holocaust is brought to you in part by,

Ba da bap bah bahhh, I'll never forget.

So I'm all caught up on the news, now. The only difference is that I skipped that in-the-moment horror. But it's not real FOMO; feeling that public panic, of "What's going to happen in the next few minutes?" is what binds us together when we witness 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination. I was left out of that loop, and missed out on that bond. But that's not a bond to feel bad about 'feeling left out of.' It's proof of my cocoon tactic working as intended: it did not effect or affect me personally. So any legitimate fear that I might have felt at the time, I didn't have to. I was spared the temporary terror that ultimately didn't come close to harming me as a human being. Save that adrenaline for another day.††

This is not bragging, please note. I'm not saying "I was spared terror that you had to endure." I'm just analyzing what my unique position resulted in. A feeling of missed fear. Hearing news like it was in a history book. It will be in a history book. "Where were you that day?" my kids will ask, and I'll have to say "blurring out personal information in my Hindsight 2020 video project, and replaying Hitman missions." I was the definition of ignorant, and that's okay.

I got to re-live the emotional turmoil with my dad as he relayed it to me anyway. So I did go through the goofy lead-up and then the stark dark turn of events that unfolded at the security-light Capitol. Harrowing shit, it turns out. It's not a joke; it's only comedic in the tragedy sense, in a cosmic sense. In a "well, what did you expect" sense.

Though to be fair to the Republican Party, who endorsed and condoned and voted for this kind of thing to happen: it's exactly what they should have expected. They wanted it.

I'm sorry, I can't help but fill my goblet with smug juice. Is it smug? What's a word for "smug, sans the smirk?" "Smug, but only because I'm watching the people who tortured me for four years that I'll never get back have egg placed on their face?" How about resigned? Defined as: "adj. – having accepted something unpleasant that one cannot do anything about." That'll work. I have no power here, just to watch and hear.

This is what four years of hell have turned me into: looking at an attempted insurrection by a sitting (loser) president (who lost the popular vote for the second time by millions and millions of votes) and simply saying "Well what did you expect?"

Well, Arieh Kovler expected much worse. He also predicted the events of January 6th in December. So, in frighteningly-poetic fashion, donald 'will not be emotionally dominated by a black president' trump decided to do his own Benghazi. If I had any kind of authority beyond casting my ballot in November, I'd be checking his emails ASAP. But hey, that was all I could do. So I am merely, thoroughly, resigned.

Yeah, I'm reading news articles again, weird huh? I gotta get back into practice so I can tune in to every waking second of what hopefully will be the Actual trial of the century.

I hope you're right, Foggy.

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I'm Into This! — January 2021

Having a President Again

I was originally gonna leave this part blank, because 'nuff said, right? But nah. I got something to say.

Whether you allowed yourself a slight celebration on the 20th or took the rest of the month off, Inauguration Day is behind us and while we can all smile at the basic 0.0001% national function of "having a president," we would be wrong to celebrate it. In a decent country the Biden/Harris candidacy would be the extreme-right wing ticket. That's how far, far, far to the right the conservative/GOP nihilistic death cult is. The republicans are actually evangelical nazis, and the democrats are actually republicans. DINOs, if you will.†††

Like, yes, it's cool and funny as fuck (I will laugh in trump's face until he dies and then keep laughing) that Joe undid the "wall," the travel ban, and a few other things over the course of an hour on Day One (instead of going to a golf course or something stupid and predictable) and while it's cool to know about that stuff, don't celebrate it. To quote Chris Rock, "What you want, a cookie?" The bastard also hasn't given you or I $2,000 but gave out at least 31 oil permits, which, THE FUCK, ASSHOLE?

See what I mean? Stupid, and predictable.

Accept nothing less.

The trump/nazi administration was kind of like someone swiping your laptop [even though the woman you were trying to hand it to got 2,865,075 more votes] and then downloading a bunch of nasty pornography on it. Now you got it back; thankfully it's undamaged (though there's a fingerprint smudge that won't come off.) Getting the laptop back and deleting all the nasty porn is not progress. It is a return to the way things were. You're just getting back to square one, except now you're four years older and 450,000+ people are dead (pandemic_response.exe was uninstalled even thought you downloaded it from a secure black man.)

That metaphor is not as concise as I could have made it but cut me slack; I get to be bitter about this for the rest of my life. I'm lucky I still have one. If I could go back in time‡ I would tell myself on November 9th, 2016 that I would still be alive. He'd be relieved. He wouldn't want to ask why I grew out a big-ass beard, though...

Ultimately, while we are allowed to feel ecstatic thrilled excited happy pleased elated relieved that there is a president in office, we should be very wary against celebrating no-brainer, no-effort, no-duh decisions and acts. Don't give Biden credit for shit he's supposed to do. We need to hold our standards higher than ever before, because climate change threatens all of us. The actions Biden does today will affect the babies being born this very second. That's a herculean amount of responsibility, and that brings me to what we need to do:

DEMAND MORE, NOW.

"Dammit this was built on something ugly. But with all my heart, man, I believe in this country... The beauty of our Constitution, have you read it lately? I swear it's really pretty lovely. It's really splendid. It's like our forefathers penned it inspired on some early Eminem shit. It's like they meant it. It's like they dreamt that all the fences that divide us would eventually be mended...or rather torn down. So I don't think it's un-American at all for us to ask for even more now." - George Watsky

That's exactly what we have to do. Biden can conceive of someone other than himself. He believes in God. We "Chose Our Opponent" and now it's time to press those buttons and fight. Demand more. Now.

If you need a nerd metaphor, then it's exactly like Merry and Pippin at the beginning of Return of the King. A movie I watched the night of January 5th, 2021.

Saruman [a humanoid individual who represented catastrophe and was corrupted by evil] is defeated, but Sauron [evil incarnate, but in a nebulous, ever-present elemental and much more powerful form, sowing the very seeds of corruption] is still here. And we shall battle his forces as best we can, so don't worry. The journey's not over.

But for now, we did just make a swamp out of Isengard. That's not nothing, even if it won't bring those trees back. To celebrate, or "celebrate," the inauguration of a human being qualified for the position of President of the United States they call Joseph R. Biden Jr., we are not merely "feasting and smoking." We are sitting on a field of victory, enjoying a few well-earned comforts.

After all, it was we, and only we, who got rid of donald 'definitely a pedophile' trump.

But it's time to get back to work. We press onward in the morning. Show us the meaning of haste. History has its eyes on us. Like the founders and civil rights leaders before us, what we demand now is what our children will receive. And there's a lot of shit we need.

Demand more. Now.

So give us $2,000 you fucking coward. Not $1400 after the prior admin force-fed us $600 of standard-lowering blood money. Your technicality bullshit won't work on me, you're not fucking five years old. Two grand, fork it or pork it.

The Adventure Zone (Finale (no spoilers))

In the week before January 5th, uncertain about the fate of the world, (that for some fucking reason hangs in the balance a lot in my life,) I decided that before I left, I needed to wrap up the first arc of the D&D fantasy adventure podcast The Adventure Zone. It's one of the best podcasts I've ever listened to. Scratch that: it's one of the greatest stories I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing, period.

I went on a listener's hiatus with about two episodes left, a little over a year ago. Why? Because I wanted to give the finale my complete, undivided attention. I would listen to TAZ as I fell asleep during most of its run, and pick up where I remember leaving off the next morning on my way to work. I could listen to it while doing other stuff too, like driving to work, or working at work. But the much-hyped finale needed a dedicated time slot all to itself. So, I gave it a whole day, re-listened to the penultimate episode, and continued to the end.

Before leaving my cocoon to face potential doom, I needed to hear my favorite adventurers, Merle, Magnus and Taako, face their own uncertain future, their own insurmountable force of destructive darkness and attrition, and come out the other side. Because I knew they'd get to win. They'd earn their happy ending, somehow, and I needed to experience that before I experienced the election results. If things ended badly here, it would potentially sour the experience after the fact. I had one surefire chance to listen to a finale that was under control; a story told by storytellers and not by random assholes with dirt-stupid supporters.

I used an empty room in the house as a kind of imaginarium, adding a make-believe layer to enhance the audio experience. Like a self-produced private concert. And I got exactly what I wanted. It was too beautiful for words. The Adventure Zone is really something special. If you're a fan of epic adventures with puzzles and magic and chaos, with equal parts goofs and heart-wrenching emotional moments, then I can't recommend TAZ enough. You can start listening here. It's worth it.

Book Reading? It can happen!

Here's how tangible the New Years spirit can be for me: I picked up a book! And started reading it! And put a bookmark in it! This is unprecedented to those who know me well because I'm out of practice when it comes to reading books. I can read books, I just don't. I cannot explain myself in a way that isn't, on some level, embarrassing.

So let's just work it out: one problem is, I'll read quite fast, and then worry that I'm not absorbing each sentence's thought fully. It's like I'm questioning my own comprehension in real-time. The thought "Did I soak in what that sentence was saying?" is itself enough to 'undo' the attention I was giving said sentence. Or maybe I'll worry I'm not nestling into the pace that the author intends. I often re-read sentences over and over, like if I'm distracted by separate trains of thought, or just to kind of 'recapture' the impact a particular line was 'supposed to have.' That's something that annoys me about myself, and it has made getting through a book a struggle in the past. When I came to recognize this habit, I tried to break it, so at least I'm self-aware about these confounding frustrations I don't fully comprehend.

I'm also a visual thinker, which can lead to imaginary misconceptions. For example, when I was reading Life of Pi I had to keep on re-sizing my mental image of the boat, as new information suggested it was larger than I assumed it was, or smaller. I don't spend a lot of time around boats in general, so in my mind lifeboats are pretty small. Apparently not always. At one point I tried to lie back in my bed to estimate and decide an idea of just how big the boat was in relation to the size of my body. That was a hurdle I had to clear in order to keep reading more simply, not constantly retconning details. In the movie, the boat was one I could see, so I had no similar problem.

And of course, there's always the fact that I spend time doing other stuff instead of picking up a book. The habitual nature of behavior. That's the easy 'free space' excuse, but the blame is still on me.

Anyway, I did start reading a book this January, in a refreshingly nonchalant way. Something just clicked, and for whatever reason, between waiting for my iPhone photos to import, and for my edited video to render, I grabbed Emily V. Gordon's Super You off my dresser and cracked it open. Completely casually! That might be the key: there was no great impetus, or scheduled time slot allotted for it. I just let it happen. On a whim. 'Cause I had a few minutes.

Now, for a lot of movies, I'll put aside all distractions and just watch. Some video games I won't play unless I devote all my attention to it (including sometimes turning out lights in the room.) No podcasts or laptop browsing or anything. Pokémon, a hand-held game, I can't play out or about anymore. I used to as a kid, but for years now I can only progress in the story of a Pokémon game if I've got the sound up (or through headphones) and I'm reading every word of dialogue. Undivided attention, hoping for maximum immersion in a more perfect world.

Pictured: harmony between man and nature

That's similar to my book problem, kinda. If I think I "need" to have completely free time in my day for it, I do it rarely. I manage to keep so busy with other crap; I barely progress through these games in my favorite video game series of all time. I love them deeply, but that very admiration has become like a sacrosanct barrier keeping me from actually playing them. I can't do it casually.

With regards to reading a book, the answer to my peculiar progression problem was found by Just Doing It™. You intrinsically give it your full attention when you simply look at it: you only need to use your eyes, so by looking you are engaging. (The only distraction is a wandering thought.) And since the only factor for progression is your own decision to read further, unlike nearly all other forms of media, it's easy to pause and resume at any time. A clock won't tick in a book. Characters will do nothing. Thoughts will not be presented. The narrator will not speak until you continue listening to them. Just like this long-ass blog post. It's okay if you take a break.

When I have video rendering for a few minutes, I could read for a few minutes. And I can stop just as casually at the end of a paragraph or a sentence. Unless, of course, my attention is rapt; when something grips and you are compelled to keep reading, them's the goods!

Reading books wasn't even in my little notebook of New Years Resolutions, and yet I'm doing it 100% more than I was last year. That's not nothing! Super You is totally on my frequency, too. Emily V. Gordon's voice is familiar to my own prose, and obviously I'm eager to consume some candid food for thought about self-improvement. In true David Hoh fashion, I haven't really progressed much since I started. But the book is next to my bed, and I've got the tools I need to continue. I intend to keep digging in and get everything out of this book that I can. A butterfly needs nectar, or whatever. You'd think I was getting paid by the metaphor at this point. I wish I was...

(Photo by Abby Dean)

Mission[s]: Impossible – Rogue Nation & Fallout

I wrote about Rogue Nation here and Fallout here, so I won't go into much detail on the films themselves. I got a whim to revisit my old favorite Rogue Nation the other week, and then, since he was no longer in office, I don't have to be triggered into fear when people say words like "nuclear bomb" so I let myself revisit Fallout for the first time since the theater afterwards, as a treat.

In short, boy these movies are top-notch. Action filmmakers holding themselves to the absolute highest standards. Christopher McQuarrie is a mad genius (and any time he talks about the filmmaking process it is a master class,) and say what you will about Tom Cruise...the dude knows exactly how to make a movie and doesn't stop thinking about the audience. Their commentaries together are deep insights into the entire craft of filmmaking.

A few years back I went on a fling of rewatching Rogue Nation multiple times in a week -- with and without commentaries -- when Tom Cruise broke his foot during a stunt making Fallout (which was left in the film, naturally.) It gave me an itch that turned into a love affair: Rogue Nation is just a wonderful hug of a film, a warm yet pulse-pounding blanket. Fallout is the best kind of sequel, and after revisiting it, I scarfed down all three commentaries so I could obsess about it as much as its predecessor. I am looking forward to the next film with bated breath.

More catharsis

Music to Get You Through A Storm

Another thing I'm into this month is the aforementioned playlist I made that helped me leave the cocoon. I love arranging playlists, especially when it's basically all the same music I listen to regularly anyway. The distinctions come from assembling songs around a theme, and particular transitions: how different tracks 'talk' to each other in juxtaposition. In my days shuffling through this mix on repeat, I began to organize the tracks in a particular order based on feeling and intuition. I wrote down which songs perfectly followed others, and started to trace out a subconscious sense of pace.

I pared down this cultivated mix further into a Spotify playlist in the hopes that perhaps you too can it find useful. It's available here. I figured it would be good to share, since it helped me so much. Even if that dumb rapist, donald "made fun of a guy with a disability on the campaign and kept campaigning" trump, isn't president anymore, it could still provide empowerment for the other tempests of our lives.

Although edited extensively from the original playlist, it's still very long. The entirety of Foxy Shazam's Gonzo is in the mix, largely in order. But that's all fine, because I don't expect anyone to listen to it in one sitting. I don't even do it that way; it's a spigot I can turn off and on again whenever I want to have music flow into my head. I designed it with an ebb and flow.

Listening to it should give you a glimpse into what messages I'm receiving from art, and which messages I'm trying to carry with me. A great playlist can give you insights into how another person thinks, without them using their own words.

So even though the particular danger I feared isn't as much of a threat, the power of the mix remains. We are still fighting the evil American nightmare, politicians and capitalists. Tyranny is companies; the enemies of freedom are the wealthy. We're oppressed by the illusory Divine Right Of Corporation. They light the hills on fire. Maybe we run, or maybe we stay and defend.

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Well, time to wrap up this revival issue of HOH Magazine. Itself, a New Year's Resolution of mine, and a long time coming. I struggled with the upkeep of making a monthly magazine and it became an obstacle rather than an opportunity. It still is, kind of: I'm writing a decent chunk of this in early February. Though, shouldn't it be that way? January's issue is about January, so for it to be its most complete, it would come out after January's ended. Kind of the opposite of how magazines are run, but it is how blogs are run. Either way, I'm not getting paid for this, so c'est la vie.

That's the key, I think. It's not a job. This journal-diary-blog-a-zine is meant to be fun to make, at least; and be creatively fulfilling and hopefully practical for others, at most. It should not be burdensome. Yes, professionalism and perfectionism belie an unavoidable effort on my part, but that's okay. Work gotta have that ethic.

CGP Grey, notable and quality YouTube creator, has been a bit of a help in this area. Early-ish in the pandemic (May?) I watched a few of his videos on the topic of productivity. Like the nearly-self-explanatory "Weekend Wednesday," which I attempted but couldn't get to stick. Even when I was not going to my work-job, I still wasn't able to "do self-work projects" in such a strict and orderly manner, mainly since those projects aren't intended sources of income, so I can just goof off all day if I wanna.

But there were two videos I found very helpful: "Lockdown Productivity: Spaceship You," about regimenting the limited space we must isolate in during the quarantine, so that we can facilitate productivity and balance it with other aspects of our day-to-day. And the other video was about an alternative conception to New Years Resolutions: "Your Theme."

Watch it.

"Human behavior change is really hard. And the 'Resolution Rodeo' is not the way. Instead, to accomplish what you want out of resolutions -- positive life change -- but in a better way, allow me to suggest a gentler idea: give yourself a theme." This video isn't even necessarily trying to be motivational, it's suggesting you rethink the entire approach/agenda/intentions of setting goals for your self-improvement. It's not giving you a map for how to accomplish New Years Resolutions, it's giving you a map of a completely different geography. A trail you didn't know existed.

Immediately I sunk my teeth into this concept. I made some whiteboard space for "Season of _____" to look at every day. I could stand to be more effective at the whole 'being productive' thing, but it's true what Grey says: "The broadness of a theme allows its meaning to change." That flexibility allows 'what feels productive' to have many meanings, which fits comfortably with my multiple varied personal projects. And it also aligns with mental-health concepts like "not beating yourself up for falling short of your own expectations." Not that I've lowered my expectations or moved my goal posts, but I'm working to mellow out and allow myself to go at my own pace about things.

I still wrote down New Year's Resolutions in my little notebook, but now I also have seasonal themes. Do I have a theme for the whole year, 2021? Well, aside from the very broad theme the McElroy's try to nail every year (this year I think they hit the nail on the head) I don't have any ideas for assigning a theme for the whole year. It's a weird one, much like 2020, except we're prepared for it more.

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And now for a quote:

"Thinking about your thinking changes your thinking, which changes who you are."
- CGP Grey

— David "The Pants" Hoh 

ETA: By the way, if you wanted to know what I was up to the entire rest of last year, I did edit together 366 videos to do just that:

* At least 49% of this hell country, evidently.

** Flossing was a New Years resolution of mine a few back, and I stuck to my guns by sticking string to my gums.

*** I will avoid complaining about this, however, because I'll definitely take him losing in general. Beggars can't be choosers.

† It should actually be illegal that I ever felt that fear, at my generation. I don't believe in prison but the people responsible should be imprisoned.

†† Perhaps for when a quiet-footed pedestrian gets too close to me on one of my walks and I have to dart across the street like a squirrel.

††† Douchebags In Normal Opinion

‡ Alternatively, go back in time to zonk trump as a teenager, because you still shouldn't kill a baby.