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04/25/2025 -


Update to the previous update: It looks like the theater we are seeing the movie in is not going to serve beer...I really thought they did though...hmm, maybe the website is wrong. We will see and I will update tomorrow accordingly.

Star Wars update: jake offered to drive and so i will no longer have to be the DD of the group. it will be jake. that means I can drink beer as I please! I still probably will only have one beer inside the movie theater so that I don't have to pee a whole lot, peeing during movies is the bain of my existence. Having to pee at all is the bain of my existence. WHy, pee?

I really really really hope people don't quote the movie the entire time. There will be certain times that it's unavoidable, such as when palpatine says "Do it." Or when Obi-Wan says "It's over Anakin! I have the high ground!" and then Anakin says "You underestimate my power!" and then Obi-Wan says "Don't try it." and then Anakin tries it, and, well, you know the rest of the story.

IHATEYOU!

I'm going to go see "Star Wars Epsiode III: Revenge of the Sith" re-release in theaters with jackson and jake, and goin to a theater a little out of the way to do it right. Some of the closer theaters were also showing the film, but they weren't showing it with a laser projector, which is like, a lot of the reason that I want to do it. See, I have my own proojecter which does really well for how cheap I got it (free), but it isn't fulll 1080 hd, and it isn't a laser projector. Laser projectors have perfect color compared to a traditional bulb projector. I'm excited to watch lightsabers clash, lava fly, padme sweat, and most of all, THE MUSIC! OH THE MUSIC! Star Wars has the best theme/scorring of any other film I've seen, it fits so so well, John fucking Williams man! Battle of the heroes is going to be epic. The whole thing is going to be fucking. I'm going to smoke some weed beforehand, but I might be the DD for this trip and have to hold back on how much beer I can drink, one or two should be fine over the course of 2.5 hour or so. I'll also plan to bring water in the car. Maybe I'll just invite jake and jackson to drink as much as they want and I will drive safely. OR maybe jake will offer to drive since I will have to drive jackson's car, and he may just rather drive his (katherine's) car.

Okay, update: the drywall repair actually looks pretty decent. I got the color matched, primed and patched the area, then painted over in one coat. It's noticeable from certain angles, but really not bad, and not any worse than other patches done by previous tenants or maintenance people.

I ripped a piece of my drywall paint while removing an adhered cable cover. I'm going to try and fix it by first chipping away at the loose bits of paint that I pulled up, then covering that over with primer and spackle, then sanding away at the loose bits of spackle around the edge so that it blends, then paint with the paint I got color matched at Lowes Home Improvement store. I really hope it matches enough to not get into too much trouble with a security deposit or them having to repaint anything extensive.

I was reading over some of my old diary entries, because I keep all of my diary entries in a single LibreWriter document called "notesdoc.odt", I can go back and re read specific days very easily, and because it is all typed out, and I do a pretty good job of self editing, the information stays legible, unlike other forms of diaries I've had in the past, like hand writing. Here is a journal entry from a little over one month ago:

From March 26th, 2025:

◦ Yesterday I felt like having a mental break. I was driving down the highway, losing control. Traffic was so fucking bad I was attempting to bypass some of it by riding down the fast lane, but when it was a reasonable time to try and get into the lane I needed to get into when the highway splits from i-95 to 64, nobody would fucking let me in. No matter how much I pleaded with my turn signal and looking and trying to wave but nope nada nuh uh not gonna happen today buddy oh well sayonara and so I kept on going and missed the exit. I ended up having to go like 15 minutes out of the way because of the way i-95 just takes a mighty curve away from the city and into the westside of Richmond and beyond, well, on my way to where I need to go, I was bout 10 minutes away by back road when I get to a motherfucking detour, guess what, the detour doesn’t take me to where I need to go, I don’t know what the fucking happened there, but Google Maps didn’t know how to handle the detour and so it took me another 15 mintues out of the way and back on to motherfucking highway 64 into shitty ass terrible ass motherfucking traffic and when that happened I got very sad and threw my sunglasses into the floorboard (they broke) and then cried in silence while I drove home. I was having a pretty good drive before that, too, I was listening to the dead and it’s so hard to be sad when you are listening to the dead and I wanted to cry so I needed to listen to silence because thats how sad I am nowadays. I’m just too sad for music.
◦ I’m so very excited to leave this place, I just always want ot leave, why do I always want to leave why oh why oh why?
◦ I’m watching Baby Invasion tonight on the projector, maybe in the next fivem inutes or so.
◦ Work has been getting worse and worse everyday and I don’t know what to do other than just sit there and take it all in, cry a little inside, let my coworkers talk shit and whisper about me behind my back, all that. I know they do it, I can sense it. I have a feeling jena and zach were talking shit about me when I left today and I just don’t give a fuck other than the fact that I’m just so ready to leave.
◦ I want to buy a passport. I think I am going to try and get a passport once I’m back in North Carolina, I might also try and get a weed registration card or whatever the fuck before I leave Virginia. I miss North Carolina. I miss Appalachia. I’ll be back soon."

I found it interesting to relive a temper tantrum that I threw in the car after getting too frustrated with traffic and my job. I imagine that it was the type of babyish temper tantrum that causes people to make very poor decisions, much worse than breaking a pair of $20 sunglasses (they weren't even my favorite pair, I probably would've restrained from throwing my favorite pair, which is a $6 pair from www.amazon.com that look a lot like the ones Abbas Kiarostami wore in "Homework" (A neorealist "documentary" about the way schoolkids think about their lives/educational careers in Koker, Iran.)) And to that point, I'm a little more confident in my self control, but I still reacted in that way that I wish I hadn't. Normally, or at least in the past, I've been able to control my emotions quite well, typically this is also when I have more friends, and am more succesful with dating, but lately, I've felt so worked up over every little thing, that I think it's best if I reflect.

Not getting worked up over anything, even the worst of things that could happen, used to be one of my strongest characteristics, but I no longer have that sense of calm. Is it because I haven't had a profound connection with nature in a very long time. I need to seek nature. I do seek nature. I love nature.

I think moving away from Richmond and back into a much less populated area will be beneficial for this aspect about me that I once loved. I remember the first time I watched a Jimi Hendrix interview, it was one of the Dick Cavett interview clips on www.youtube.com, in which Jimi talks about not needing much, he's got his guitar, that's enough for him, he's got his music that he plays for folks and that seems like enough to him, and he seems happy, he seems chill, he seems content. I've not been content for a long time, and I'd like to get back to that... but how?

Perhaps tree bathing will help, maybe running naked through the woods would help, going swimming in natural bodies of water, all that type of stuff.

04/24/2025 -


I've been thinking about what I said about substack being too much like social media and that I don't like it anymore, but I'm also thinking that I could use that for my benefit, perhaps I could still make posts to substack but treat it as more of a place to have "releases" instead of "posts". Perhapps this will be better. I can make one final "update" style substack post and then from there I will start only posting to substack for fully-fleshed out or almost fully fleshed out pieces of writing rather than drafts or just uploading whatever for fun. Yes. That's what I'll do. I'll start by updating everyone in an update.

Today has been spent mostly watching "Reflections of Evil" directed by and starring Damon Packard, which was a 2 hour and 18 minute long movie that I kept pausing to do other things, other things like continuing to pack mmy apartment in Richmond to temporarily move back in with my parents in Burlington, before moving back to the mountains, where I belawng. Another time I paused the movie was so that I could make scrambled eggs and toast; I was going to make coffee as well but decided to try the day without it and see how it goes, so far, a little sleepy, but that's all, overall I've been consistently doing well. The best part of my day has been the walk to and from Stellas grocery store, which was a thing that I did after the movie, the best part of the walk was when I looked over my shoulder and saw an old man riding his bicycle towards me, I stopped and didn't cross the road like I had planned, and instead nodded to the man on the bicycle, who I think nodded back, it was hard to tell, really, nontheless, it was the best part of my day, whether he nodded or didn't nod.
Another time I paused the movie was when I needed to move my car, since I'm about to move away from Richmond, I didn't want to waste money buying a parking pass for a month in a lot, when I could just participate in "the parking game" in which I have to move my car every 2 hours from 10am to 4pm or I could get a ticket, but today I decided not to move my car after the first move at noon, thinking that I could probably be safe without moving it again at 2pm, and risk it, I don't know how they can even tell how long I've been there anyway; nobody has ever marked my tires and it's never looked like anyone has ever driven by to take my license plate, but who really knows? Not me.

"Reflections of Evil" is another one of those movies with that uncommon Quality I wrote about yesterday. Most of the dialogue is dubbed in a way that is obviously not the character's voices who are speaking, and other times sound effects are stolen from movies like Star Wars or maybe E.T. or maybe even Shindlers List for what kind of brain comes up with these ideas I don't know, a lot of the latter half of the film takes place in the universal theme park and at some point a character gets on a ride called "The Shindlers List Ride" and theres something so quirky about it being actually filmed at a theme park, and actually having people dress up like german nazi gaurds in the park, not to mention Bob's outfit throughout the park.
The film would be made much differently today, I imagine, and while the overarching themes are very much still ringing true, I mean, I certainly am --this-- close to yelling "I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU" to any random passerby in the city who might look at me funny, but the difference between me and Bob is that I don't do that, self control is key.

04/23/2025 -


This is the first blog I will be posting to this website. I don't like the idea of Substack anymore because it seems to be way too much like social media, which I don't like, especially because I want to be sure that I own all of my content, which I'm unsure I do if I upload it to sSubstack. This is going to be a mostly unedited compilation of thoughts and ideas that I might have; I want to hold myself accountable to things that I say that I'm working on when in reality I haven't touched in weeks...I'm talking to *you* melatonin essay...
I also want to have a succesful portfolio of all of my works such as essays, films, books, poems, anything and everything that I want. Welcome to macraybraxton.com. I will try to be here everyday.

I watched all of Caveh Zahedi's "The Show About The Show" and I loved it. It's the type of work that makes you want to be a director, or at least makes me want to be a director, that is, of course, I already wanted to be a director, but Caveh makes films that make me want to be a director just like him. I want to make movies like his. They have an uncommon Quality about them that i just like a lot. That Quality reminds me of the same quality that i find in a Jafar Panahi film, or like in Symbiopsychotaxiplasm and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm take 2 1/2 by William Greaves, there is a feeling I get that I just can't explain. Oh Laura Poitras also has that Quality about her films, and perhaps Errol Morris as well. They don't all have to be documentaries or neorealism either, I think a filmmaker like David Lynch also shares this Quality, maybe just on a different plane.

That different plane is what I aspire to reach one day myself as a filmmaker. Beyond that plane I believe is becoming one of the greats of all time, your Kubricks, your Spielbergs, your Scorseses, not many else who can claim what they can claim. Even Tarantino isn't on that plane, but moreso on the previous plane described.