Joe's Notes

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This is my blog and I do whatever I want here. I write my thoughts about things and short stories, I take photos, and have lots of book reviews. Make sure to check out the PRODUCTS page to order your edgy t-shirts or the PRINTS page to get prints of my photography! Use the search bar at the bottom of this page to discover more posts. Use the ARCHIVE page to see all my posts. Categorical searches will also yield good results for those who want more of a specific group of posts such as “Photo Journal” or “Book Review”. Check out the OLD BLOG for over 270 posts that go back to 2010 and get your PRINTS at the Prints Store!

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Book Review: Breathed out By God by Channing Cornwall

September 06, 2019 by Joe Gray in Book Review

Breathed out by God is Channing Cornwall's sixth novel and the second in a series following the book Hell Came With Her, whose characters show up in this entry but are not the main characters here. This new entry into the series shows a different side of the author. A side that is conflicted yet organized, and maybe, just a little preachy.

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September 06, 2019 /Joe Gray
art, authors, book, book review, books, Breathed Out by God, channing cornwall, Christianity, fiction, independent, novelist, novels, religion, review, reviews, series, story, storytelling, westerns, writing
Book Review

A Pleasant Haunting

September 04, 2019 by Joe Gray in Memoirs, Religion, Music

I have a complicated relationship with "The Church".

There are two types of churches that I attended growing up. One was the mainstream small-town Christian Church. It had youth groups, Sunday school, basketball hoops, and a few hundred people would show up each Sunday. I was in a youth group that was a religious version of the Boy Scouts called Awanas. We memorized Bible verses, had sack-races and I'm sure there was some kind of music involved. It was not an unpleasant experience and I was pretty good at memorizing lines from the Bible. Later I would despise the idea of rote memorization and to this day do not put much effort into memorizing things. The idea of memorizing information that someone else thinks is important is offensive.

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September 04, 2019 /Joe Gray
A Pleasant Haunting, bible, blog, christian, Christianity, church, churches, growing up, history, hymn, life, memoir, music, religion, the church
Memoirs, Religion, Music

Photo Journal 8/31/2019

August 31, 2019 by Joe Gray in Photo Journal

Portland, Oregon

Shot with Canon 5DMkIII

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August 31, 2019 /Joe Gray
adobe, bees, blog, canon, closeup, color, flowers, insects, lightroom, macro, macro photography, macros, oregon, photo journal, PNW, portland, summer, tiny
Photo Journal

Undulating Quantum Probabilities

August 29, 2019 by Joe Gray in Fiction, Poetry, Psychology, Rants, Thoughts, Whimsies

Someone once told me that the world is upside down but our minds correct this and we see the world right-side up. Sky side up. This is not true. The world is right-side up and our eyeballs are curved like a crystal ball that focuses light onto the retina. The resulting image is a projection of the world-oriented upside down because of curvature. The brain does not care that the image is physically disjointed from reality because it can represent the data in almost any orientation. It just so happens that the most adaptive way to represent this data is in a way that doesn't disorient us and lead to injuries; right side up.

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August 29, 2019 /Joe Gray
blog, consciousness, development, drugs, eyes, fiction, journal, observation, perception, philosophy, poetry, possibilities, probability, psychedelics, psychology, quantum, reality, thoughts, undulating, waves
Fiction, Poetry, Psychology, Rants, Thoughts, Whimsies

Pretending Entertainment

August 18, 2019 by Joe Gray in Balance, Cultural Musings, Gaming, Lifestyle, Psychology, Thoughts

I used to work for a large video game store. One where you might Stop to buy Games. I mostly sold bullshit. Grown men coming up and saying "I wanna pretend I'm driving a car. Is there a game for that?" Pretending and having imaginary friends was once relegated to children but now, it seems, that children do not grow up. Looking for any excuse to feel accomplishment in virtual worlds to distract from the reality of a failure to accomplish personal goals is the purview of men who've been neglected by their parents and devalued by society. Getting self-esteem from simulated successes creates a fog of delusion that, if cleared away, reveals an inflated ego ready to burst.

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August 18, 2019 /Joe Gray
adulthood, culture, development, diary, games, gaming, growing up, journal, life, maturity, men, philosophy, psychology, thoughts, thoughts on, video game, video games
Balance, Cultural Musings, Gaming, Lifestyle, Psychology, Thoughts

Photo Journal 8/17/2019

August 17, 2019 by Joe Gray in Photo Journal

Portland, Oregon

Shot with Canon 80D

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August 17, 2019 /Joe Gray
blog, blogger, canon, canon 80d, long exposure, night, night photography, nighttime, oregon, photoblog, photography, photojournal, portland, street photography
Photo Journal
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