Unopened Edition

17 May 2026

If I am interpreting the Substack stats correctly, if I emailed you this, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that you are reading it. But that’s not really what the title is about. Yesterday, I started reading an old book (Plato’s Republic) I had bought at a used bookstore once upon a time thinking that I ought to read it one day. After finally starting, I noticed that some of the pages were “unopened” (still joined together). Apparently this was a popular practise in the mid-1800s. If I left them, it might have increased the value of the book (published in 1901), but I used my Swiss army to open them because I wanted to read it. I’m sure that’s a metaphor for something.

Monday

Speaking of books, I enjoyed The Bookshop, a British movie on Kanopy with actors whom I recognized but mostly didn’t know the names of. It was based on a book I hadn’t read or heard of, so I don’t know if it was better or worse. I’ve given up on being hard core about reading a thing before watching it and I suppose that’s one reason this story seems like a quaint period piece from the 1950s, when bookstores were more of a thing.

Tuesday

Apologies to Robert Frost and The Road Not Taken. I’ve heard the poem is often misinterpreted, so what is one more cartoon? I just noticed that I had meant to darken the woods in the third panel so it would look like red eyes watching him, but I forgot. A panel not coloured. Anyway, I have heard that people tend to end up preferring the choice that they make.

Wednesday

I enjoyed a webinar sponsored by Science and Technology Awareness Network about Game-Based Learning by an expert in game design named Scott Nicholson. I think that he was referring more to games that might be used in a classroom setting rather than stand alone exhibits. Anyhow, I have worked on both kinds of situations and it made me realize how although I did my best at the time, I might have done things better, particularly in the area of encouraging cooperation.

Thursday

My grandmother on my father’s side had been a seamstress and we had some of her quilts, which were carefully cut out pieces that fit together in geometric patterns. My grandfather on my mother’s side sewed together cloth gin labels to make pillow covers. I had worn out socks, underwear, and pajamas that I was wondering what to do with, so I started sewing bits of them onto an old bedsheet while listening to a podcast in the evening. Usually just one at a sitting and not necessarily every evening so it has taken me a number of years to get it to where complete enough to use but not something I could give anyone in good conscience.

Friday

I saw a video about how we tend to dismiss our future selves in favour of our weak current selves. It was pointed out to me that in this comic, it seems as though the future self does not seem a favourable outcome if positive choices were made. My intention was that my current self will probably not do what he should and therefore end up like some kind of Gollum-like thing. I always get mixed up by time travel narratives. Recently, I saw a local public service ad promoting a vaccination by featuring an adult future-self thanking their younger self for getting it.

Saturday

I recently had to increase the dose of a medication. Now of course, as in the previous cartoon, I could be doing better. Still, it seems that even if pharmaceutical companies could make a pill that actually cured my physical deficiencies once and for all, they probably wouldn’t, so that instead, people just have to keep taking pills. This seems similar to how other corporations are making products that you have to keep paying for. I guess we are the batteries, sort of like in the Matrix.

Sunday

Another scene from Not Made in Japan, my graphic memoir-in-progress about my time living in Japan during the late 1980s when I was in my mid-twenties studying marine ecology. This is part of an excursion to Okinawa by boat with a fellow grad student Nishihama, who was a Japanese with albinism. I guess the ship used Auld Ang Syne, the piece they play on New Year’s Eve, because it is about remembering old friendships. I don’t think any young women used the open sleeping arrangement on that ship. The wig of the pop idol was inspired by Akina Nakamori from that era.

That was my week. I hope you had a good one, with a better one to come.