Nocturne

 It's New Years, but I'll spare you the "Good riddance, 2020" takes. (Which tend to come from people who need to take a long look in the mirror, but we'll glide over that.)

A friend who shall remain nameless has a nocturnal complaint. He'll get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, as we all do. Then he can't get back to sleep. 

The thing is, he can tell me the exact time he was awake from. And I tell him that's his mistake, taking notice of the time. When I have to get up and then go back to bed, I at no time take a look at the digital clock by my bed. I get back in bed and face the other way. It's called peace of mind.

Ha ha...ha?

 UnHerd has become a daily reading habit of mine, and I generally respect its content and the people creating it. So at first I didn't know what to make of this column. It might be best to regard it as a joke. Not one that I get, necessarily, and maybe the author doesn't either. But a joke nonetheless.

The part about Biden's nomination being "more accident than design" is certainly hilarious, if you remember how he came up 4th or 5th place in both Iowa and New Hampshire, occasioning a full establishment panic to get him over the top in SC.

Tongues

 I've had this alternate history in my mind for a while. Don't know if I'll ever do anything with it except to amuse and torment myself. Basically it reverses the historical place of the Romans and the Thracians, so that the former are a once formidable but now forgotten band that once roamed Italy, while the latter ruled most of the known world from east of Greece. I won't go into all the differences, which are quite capable of shifting in my head anyway. But here are some key ones.

• Southeastern Europe, and a little bit of Asia Minor, is considered the height of Western Civilization. So that's where the prestige is, at least through the Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
• But the countries of Western Europe still become global powers during the exploration and colonization of the Americas. This is because they're right on the Atlantic so don't have to cross other people's territories for access.
• Odrysos did settle these places, but it wasn't the same kind of unifying force that far west as Rome was in our timeline. So the equivalents of, say, France, Spain, and Britain are more disparate. Thus, so is their influence in the Western Hemisphere.
• Otherwise things are just different, sometimes in unpredictable ways.

Anyway, thinking along these lines has made me also think about the relations between language, culture, and nationhood. There's an adage, attributed to linguist Max Weinreich, that "A language is a dialect with an army and navy."

This is pithy and witty, but not quite accurate. The United States, Mexico, and Brazil all speak languages that originated in countries that they could wipe out militarily. Catalan and Occitan are among the languages that don't have their own nations, although they might wish otherwise. India is a stew of thousands of languages, with the middle classes retaining English to smooth things over. And of course China is a whole can of worms.

It's more that a dialect is a language that hasn't started thinking of itself as a separate language. The US, again, is a prime example. The various strains of American English differ from British dialects on a number of matters. "Separated by a common language" and all that. But despite being separate from the British Commonwealth for about 2.5 centuries, Americans still think of themselves as an English-speaking people, and thus remain so. The same is true in a number of former colonies, including some that have also managed to preserve their native languages.

The same is true of old literary language. Shakespeare's English being called "modern" for example. It takes nothing away from his accomplishments to say that he remains "modern" in large part due to the efforts of good teachers, actors, directors, etc. Because they approach his words as revealing psychological dialog instead of pretty-sounding metered gibberish.

12

 Today was, of course, Christmas. Now I'd say I had things to be thankful for. At the same time, it was a hemmed-in day. It rained hard as long as the sun was up. Everything was closed because it was Christmas, and much of the world is shut down in general now. So going anywhere wasn't much of an option.

This will be different tomorrow. Boxing Day. A time to start over.

Vince on the keys

 

Vince Guaraldi's music from A Charlie Brown Christmas and other things was a comforting element of my childhood and has stayed with me. I think there are a lot of us of whom that could be truthfully said. 

This piece isn't Christmas-related. It's not from one of the Peanuts specials either. It does seem to scratch that itch, though.

Fruit of the vine

 Grapes tend to become less flavorful during the late fall and winter. Likely a result of their having to travel further in inclement weather. I'd be very surprised if it were just grapes, so everyone could probably point to some other foodstuff being slightly off.

So it's notable that today I found some firm grapes that were sweet and tart in just the right measure. Maybe it's a good omen.

Hand me my nose ring, show me the mosh pit

 Don't know if you've heard of the movie Green Room. It came out about five years ago. Could be called a horror movie or a thriller. More than a little claustrophobic.

Here's the basic premise. An impoverished hardcore band are on tour in their van. They drive to a college town in Oregon for a college gig, only to find out that it's been cancelled and all they're getting is a minuscule kill fee. The college radio man who was promoting them feels remorse and sets them up with an alternate gig. It's in a secluded spot, a hangout for the "boots and braces" crowd, i.e. White Power skinheads. They make the interesting choice to start their gig with a cover of the Dead Kennedys' "Nazi Punks Fuck Off," but that's not where their problems start. Rather, things get hairy for them when they witness the aftermath of a murder and get confined to the titular room, with a growing understanding that the skinheads don't intend to let them walk away.

I don't want to get too far into this issue, but the prevalence of violent white supremacists has been exaggerated by the media in recent years, leading to greater polarization and some questionable decisions in general.

So it's interesting to note, and perhaps to its credit, that politics and race aren't really the driving force of the drama in Green Room. In theory the antagonists may hate any number of ethnic minorities. Their leader Darcy―played by Patrick Stewart with a world-weary gravitas and a truly bizarre accent―makes a couple of offhand racist references. But primarily he's a gangster, and his followers are violently loyal hoodlums. The Ain't Rights, as the band are known, are white themselves. Bassist Sam makes mention of guitarist and lead character Sam being Jewish, but this could be a joke. In any event he shows no outward sign of being anything other than generically Caucasian. And despite their tweaking the crowd with their song selection, they don't want to get into a political beef, just get enough money to buy gas to get home. It's just that they're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All of which is to say that Green Room is less topical and more timeless than you may have heard. It's also pretty damn violent, so be advised.

Mucha nieve

 The first noticeable snowfall of the year was the day before Halloween. You could probably call what we got today the first big snowfall, though. Not enough to cripple the city (more than it already is), but enough to make you walk in the gutter instead of on the sidewalk for a few stretches. Also enough so that I took a ride over to Riverside to do some very light grocery shopping, because the one closer is at the end of a walk that...wouldn't have been pleasant in this weather.

Gotta say it was a good day

 I went to the library today to pick up a couple of things. One of them is an inter-library loan that would have gone back to its home branch if I hadn't gone to pick it up today. I'd intended to go Saturday, but as it turned out I was unavailable due to something that could laughingly be referred to as "work." But anyway, I caught it in time.

Also I took note of a couple of reopenings today. Some businesses and other orgs closed down for late November and the first two weeks of December as part of something called the "Rhode Island Pause." Basically a "let's pretend we're accomplishing something" C19 policy. So those particular places are springing back to life at least. 

A quick one (not necessarily while he's away)

 As I say, this one won't take you long.

I'm not sure where the music comes from. I'm reasonably positive it's not actual surf music from the sixties. Does bear some of that influence.

Not too complex. Basically I like this stop-motion film because it's fun. A girl and her surfboard and some fishes. What could be better?

Further pigeon discussion

 This video host is quite the perky one, I have to say. While people adopting and taking birds into their own homes may not be a great idea in general, there seem to have been exigent circumstances in this case.

One other thing about pigeons, which I can infer from a number of recent finds on YouTube, is that they're popular in the Mideast. Not just for racing and messaging, but as pets in themselves. Curious how that came about.

Night visions

 

Stop helping

 The writing assistance company Grammarly advertises a lot, and I guess they've gotten pretty successful. As a result, it appears that Microsoft Word is trying to imitate their services. That means a lot of "helpful" advice in the form of a crinkly blue line that underlines your words whenever you write something that strikes the algorithm as ungainly or wordy.

The thing is, yes, I agree that it's better in general to be economical in your word choices. But having every stray modifier flagged while you're in the process of writing is distracting. Sometimes you have to figure out what you want to say first before you start the process of trying to say it better.

So I've pretty much turned off grammar check and am happy for it. Not spell check, though. That's a necessity.

Day of cold drizzle

 I got a ride today from one of my former neighbors. She just happened to be in the neighborhood, doing some errands (for other people) and saw me out in the rain. So yes, she did a nice thing.

It was kind of rainy at the time, something that started yesterday afternoon and would continue until after sundown today. Although eventually the temperature would drop so low that we'd be getting sleet, then snow. For which reason I made my grocery shopping trip later on in East Providence instead of the place closer by, but at the base of a hill with lots of potholes and puddles.

Snow doesn't seem to have stuck. Pretty sure we'll have ice tomorrow, though.

All is vanity

 This story, which isn't short but isn't ridiculously long either, is depressing in a lot of ways but fascinating in the detail that author Jonathan Kay goes into. The upshot of it all is that the striking students at the quite exclusive Haverford College got some nice perks for themselves. The school administration debased themselves, but at least turned the protests into a PR victory of a sort. The family, friends, and neighborhood of the man in the incident that started everything―a man whom the system failed before the fatal 9-1-1- call was ever made―don't have their lives improved in any meaningful way at all. They might not know this protest that quickly became about nothing but itself ever happened, and maybe that's for the best. 

Also on the "depressing" side of the equation are the excerpts from the demands made by students toward the administration, which could be described as sounding "righteous" or "incendiary" but for the most part say nothing at all. But as a wise man once said: 

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.

That essay has never left me, and it never ceases to be relevant.

The hard-hitting content you come here for

 Passed a bakery cafe today. Since a lot of places have been bribed and/or threatened into closing their doors for the next couple of weeks, I thought I'd have a look-in. Wasn't sure what if anything to get until I saw they had fudge brownies. Brownies, that is, with fudge frosting on top. Not necessarily something I'd indulge in every day, but destiny had brought us together.

No walnuts, which is fine. Walnuts always strike me as the most generic nut. They've got an interesting look―kind of like a flattened brain―but not a great deal of flavor.

Alertitude

 Something I've noticed. If I lie down and take a nap during the day―if I can somehow swing that―I usually feel refreshed when I wake up, and I can get more done. If I do the same thing after 10 at night, my concentration is shot and I generally can't accomplish anything. This is frustrating, but not inexplicable. 

What seems to work better at night is if I lie down for a bit but keep my eyes open. That seems to avoid sending my body a surrender signal.

WASPocalypse

 Reading on Lionel Shriver's novel The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 is still in progress. Surprises are a possibility, and to some degree expected. Still, I feel like I can share my impressions so as to give you the feel.

For context, I read a good portion of it today in a city water park by the river. Walking back and forth while reading, I kept seeing the same hypodermic syringe on the ground, and registering my doubt that some diabetic had dropped it while taking his insulin shot. There was a shouting match between two guys over one having his dog of the leash and the dog rushing the other guy, although not biting him.

This is not to say it was a lousy day. It wasn't, and the skateboarders on the Korean War monument were enjoying themselves. But it's a near-future story about the decline of America and the globe overall, and the personal conflicts that will rise. It seems only right to bring in supporting evidence from the real world.

The cause of the book's Armageddon-of-sorts is fairly simple to describe. The USA defaults on its debt in what becomes known as the Renunciation. What that means for the Mandibles, an extended Old Money family, is that the dollars they've counted on for security have drastically reduced in value, leaving them high and dry. Carter, a journalist idled by the previous collapse of newspapers, has to take his nonagerian father and the father's demented second wife out of their (once) cushy nursing home and house them in his own flat. Daughter Florence, an aid worker with a brainy teenage son and live-in Latino boyfriend (not the boy's father but a good surrogate) can't afford her house without putting up her eccentric aunt, an expatriate writer no longer welcome in Europe. Her more conservative sister Avery loses her therapy practice while her husband loses his job as an economics professor. They and their children all have to go live with Florence as well.

The characters all come from privilege. Not the vague kind of privilege currently attributed to everyone of Western European descent, but an actual elevation from the troubles of the common folk. This is quite deliberate, and serves a purpose. The fiscal catastrophe brings them low, so you know it's real. We assume that come what may, the great Mayflower families and the descendants of nineteenth century captains of industry will be have their needs met and then some. And some surely will. But maybe even in their class, some are expendable. And Shriver knows that if your story requires breaking stuff, it's more dramatic if it's the Good Stuff.

The author is an interesting figure. She's in essence a left-liberal, but has made some apostasies―most recently on COVID―which cause some to associate her with the right. So does that make The Mandibles a takedown of smug liberals launched by a smug conservative? I don't see it that way. The character of Avery―note that she goes by a three syllable man's name―receives as many barbs as anyone. Shriver is fairly unfair to everyone, in an equitable way.

No, I'd say it's a satirical but humanist dystopia. One that we can reflect on while making our way through this one.

Finally someone said it

 On my appointed rounds today I saw a poster pasted to a lamppost. It was the swaddled figure of Maggie Simpson. Beside her was text reading "Smartphones are adult pacifiers."

This brightened my day, or at least my mood in the moment. I'd have a hard time saying why, exactly. It probably helps that the barb was pointed at passive thinking, surely a worthy target.

Just cuz

 

To the extent that I have any reason for posting this one, it's just to show that humor is one of those things. Like, when I was a kid and heard this, much of the humor went over my head. Although I did get that "woke up this afternoon" was a contrast to the usual "...this morning." And the singer having two cars to begin with. But see? I'm going down a dangerous road. Analyzing humor rarely leads to funny results.

Raptor tales

 

Today while walking home from grocery shopping I was a few minutes away from the Stop & Shop I passed by a tributary of the river and was just about at an empty parking lot. And what did I see? An honest-to-goodness hawk. Not flying overhead. It was just there, perched on the railing, still and watchful and―at the shortest distance―just a couple of feet from me. It was kind of an unnerving experience because those birds are huge and they're very efficient killers. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't cool as well.

Later in the same walk I looked down at the sidewalk and saw a pair of black lace panties. It might be significant that the street I was on also has a big laundromat, albeit a number of blocks back. An educated guess tells me that the hawk didn't have anything to do with the skivvies. Still, the writer in me wants to conjecture that it did.

But no

 Here―and once again, apologies for not being able to embed non-YouTube videos―is a stand-up bit that was quite celebrated when it first came out. Louis CK is a talented comic who has since been exiled from polite society for behavior that could be called sexual harassment but might be better characterized as "being a moron."

But this routine was hailed as brilliant and insightful, in a way that always rankled me. Because already, people seemed to have stopped asking questions.

First of all, if someone says that they're privileged because "I can get into a time machine and..." well, the question that raises is, "What time machine? Where is there a time machine?"

And any time of history? Not if you land someplace ruled by Genghis Khan and his Mongol Empire, friend. For that matter, you wouldn't get far in Ancient Rome speaking this barbarian Teutonic tongue. It doesn't really make sense to talk about white supremacy on a global scale before the start of the sixteenth century when the powers of Western Europe started expanding across the oceans.

The thing is, if you say that group X has always wound up on top at any time in history, that's not very different from saying that group X is innately superior.

A comparison

 Different approaches to the same material.

This is Joni in what's probably her most acclaimed phase. It's undeniably catchy. And as a non-musician, I have to doff my hat to her guitar playing on this one.

Still you wouldn't necessarily expect the Supremes to take on this intimate singer-songwriter stuff. They're version is noticeably brassed up, not to bad effect.

They were more of an ensemble than is always remembered. The lead vocal here is taken by Jean Terrell, who took Diana Ross's place when she left. 

For the record, Flo Ballard is my favorite Supreme.

Fables of the feline

 Today I passed by the pet supply place at the base of the hill where I live. Not too surprisingly, someone was walking in holding a leash. But what was on the end of this leash? At first I assumed it was a small dog. But that wasn't quite right. There's a difference in movement between a small dog and a long cat. And this cat was quite long, actually larger than some dogs.

It also had quite short hair. Not quite hairless, but sleek. I was going to say a Sphynx, but I've looked up pictures of Sphynx cats, and this didn't look anything like that. So that part remains a mystery.

They

 "I see," said Spartacus. "You're all me. That's handy.."

It was indeed handy for some. What it wasn't was interesting.

----

By way of explanation, I think the above was written when I gave up trying to write my opinion on whatever I was trying to blog about and made an attempt at (extremely) short fiction. Mainly a demonstration on how my brain doesn't work after I pass a certain level of sleepiness.

The id

 

Hello, it's me

 I took a notion today to try blogging from work. Sh, don't tell anyone. Anyway, I forget what I wanted to talk about, because I couldn't log in. Like, I could, I remembered my Google password. But because it was an "unfamiliar device" I was supposed to give them an authorization code, which they'd send to my cell, which is dormant now. I got a code through email, but somehow they said they still couldn't verify it was me. 

So, I mean, I guess if anyone wants to take over this blog and somehow gets hold of my password, they're still out of luck.

Putting the subject to bed

 I was out walking today after breakfast and a quick trip to the library. This was apparently around the time it became clear that Biden had enough states to take the presidency and it was all over but the shouting.

Then, of course, the shouting. Well, the cheering, really. A lot of hooting, honking of car horns, some people hitting pots with spoons. And you know what? Go for it. I'm not going to object to anyone feeling joy at the tail end of a year that seems to have become an expletive.

That said, if I never again encounter the sanctimony of so much of what came to be the anti-Trump campaign it will be too soon. It's been a very vapid and substance-free autumn.

Also, <i>Saturday Night Live</i>, you have, what, ninety cast members now? Get one of them to do Biden for you. Jim Carrey shows no sign of having any interest in it.

Ambience

 This evening after work I took the bus home, but rode it a ways past my stop. I went to a coffee shop on the eastern edge of the city. It's still mostly takeout. I got a little cookie and a cup of coffee. From there I headed to the park.

In the park I sat on a bench by the fountain, which hasn't actually had water flowing through it in a while but still looks purdy. I chewed on the cookie, enjoyed the coffee, and read my book. It's an anthology of short stories about witches. Most of the stories I've read in it haven't really grabbed me. Too much worldbuilding and not enough impressionism, but that's just me.

But it didn't matter. With the clocks turned back it was the dark of night by this time. This is a nice little park, a playground and lawn at the base of a long trail. People tend to be socially distanced because it's New England. On the other hand a lot of denizens are maskless. Combined with the scattered lights in the darkness that gives it an otherworldly feel, or more aptly an outside-of-time one. Hanging out there brings a dreamy excitement to the day.

Um, okay

 In the past few days I've noticed some places around town that are boarded up. Not closed. These businesses, for the most part, are still operating. But there's a protective layer of lumber around the buildings.

This is election-related, of course. A huge number of places in New York and DC have similar precautions in place. Election-related violence is a bad sign all around, but there we are.

Beats and measures

 

This is the original of a song that's been through a few different versions. Danny Kaye sang it as Hans Christian Andersen. Charles Aznavour did a duet of it with Robin on The Muppet Show.

It's lovely, of course. But what is it? Projection? Metaphor? An actual inchworm won't actually go far with arithmetic. I only point this out so you won't misdirect your anger.

Lynn Garland, Loesser's then-wife, does a nice job on the backing vocals.

Dreaming of a white whatever

 The first thing to remember is that yesterday it started raining in the morning and never really let up. It got heavier and lighter, but never stopped.

This morning I got up late, so had to hurry through my routine. I did notice that the ground was still wet, and that more was coming down. But more what? It wasn't until I was running to the bus stop in a panic that I noticed that snow was mixed in with the rain. It became dominant later in the day.

It's weird to see snow piled up on trees when their leaves are still partly green. I talked to an older gentleman about this while waiting for the bus home. He says he could remember a big snowstorm that happened on Mother's Day. So you never know.

Talking to strangers at a bus stop. Little things you might not have expected to miss, but are a relief when they come again.

Call it odd, call it weird

 Here's an interesting little eventlet. I've been working on a story recently. How's it going? Oh, the very definition of fits and starts.

Anyway, one of the characters is a sleepwalker, and sleepwalks in the story. Me, I'm not really known to sleepwalk. So there goes the "write what you know" thing that I don't really believe in.

HOWEVER, a couple of nights ago I got up and took a shower in the middle of the night when I wasn't really aware of it. The next day I could have forgotten it completely or written it off as a dream. Bu there were pieces of evidence showing me what I'd done. Didn't seem right to dismiss it.

What's up, doc:

 I was walking down the hill where I live this evening. I walked past someone's house/apartment building/you get the idea. There was a rustle in the bushes ahead of me. The cause turned out to be a little bunny either foraging or just stretching its legs. It wasn't a pet bunny, I'm pretty sure. Just one of God's wild creatures, out on its own. So yeah, I was kind of honored by that.

Outrageous

 It never impresses me when a politician or news article asks "where's the outrage?" over this or that. Like I forgot to be indignant about something and I'm going to thank them for reminding me. Maybe my outrage reflex is just burned out through overuse. Wouldn't be surprising. 

In general I find it creepy when they try to dictate certain feelings. It's the very opposite of empathy.

Long lost relatives

 Interesting article here on the question of the extent to which Neanderthals did or did not live in caves. The word is in some circles synonymous with "caveman," and they may have lived in caverns moreso than did early modern humans. But then, a sheltered dwelling like that will preserve remains―human and otherwise―more than the open-air places they might have lived. We do know that their hunting habits required them to be rather nomadic.

But learning more is a challenge for paleoanthropologists. For humans a few centuries is a long time. Civilization as we know it is only a few millennia old. And we're talking about something like 100,000 years ago. There's a lot left to learn, but there will always be a lot to imagine. And that can be good.

Collecting speech

American English is very different from UK English--almost a misnomer in itself, as there are so many British dialects--and about anything else. English accents pop up all over the them, usually being attributed to somewhere else. Yet American and Canadian English have a tendency to build up melodrama.

EDIT

Okay, I have no idea. I do remember having an idea for something I wanted to say when I wrote the above. But as to what that something was? Nope, no clue. But you never know when it might come back.

News & weather

 I had a gander at this article the other day and found the central premise to be an interesting tidbit. Apparently incumbent President Donald Trump is polling considerably better with black and Hispanic voters than he did in 2016. Conversely, his support among non-college whites has collapsed.

The second part is fairly easy to understand. Trump sold himself last time as being a go-getter who would take charge and force Washington to do things his way. He hasn't quite lived up to that. I sort of figured his base, or at least some of them, would turn on him, and it looks like it's happening.

I can understand the other part as well. Four years in, black and Hispanic voters have tasted Trump's bite, and found that it's considerably less severe than his bark. For the most part the changes have been aesthetic. And there have been positive steps like the First Step Act.

As well, this is undeniably the COVID-19 election. The virus is less lethal than its reputation, but for middle class voters who saw nothing to prevent them from becoming centennarians, it's earth-shattering. Working class voters, most of whom are non-white, may be better equipped to put risks in context, and so be less prone to panic.

Funny flies

 Lewis Carroll was great at throwaway details. I mean, on first glance everything in the Alice books is a throwaway.

The insects that the Gnat describes to Alice are a case in point. Bread-and-butterfly, Rocking-horse-fly, and Snap-dragonfly. While the Disney adaptations use at least one of them, Carroll only needed them for that one chapter, that one passage. To show that we're playing by his rules now. The Snap-dragonfly is inspired by a mostly forgotten game, one that sounds intriguing.

John Tenniel was a painter and a political cartoonist. He serves Carroll well as an illustrator. These creatures look like they're from a nature book of the period, albeit with absurd features.

Make it stop

 The laundromat I usually go to has a tendency to play awful daytime talk shows when I do the wash there. Not real edifying, but it doesn't affect me all that bad.

But they close relatively early, and have been closing even earlier during the quarantine. And I've been working the past couple of weeks, which is mostly good.

The thing is, I've had to go to a different laundromat the last two times I've done laundry. And this one has been playing the evening news. NBC I think. And please, give me the talk shows back. Those insult my intelligence in a less horrifying way.

What you see is what you see

Разговорное время

 My old wristwatch had a tendency to have its glass broken. This can be a big problem as far as it's working goes, as you might imagine. Especially if there's a chunk of the crystal blocking one or both arms. Even if the arms still go, it's ugly to look at.

I replaced it recently. The replacement arrived today. It's Russian. Feels pretty good on my wrist. One thing that seemed like an issue was that I didn't know how to set the time and the instruction booklet was―no big surprise, I guess―in Russian. But I found English instructions online, and it turns out to be pretty simple.

End of the day

 

Chopin's etudes are―at least sometimes―a good way to finish off the day. Individually they go by quite fast, everything being quick impressions. I was going to say that they avoid bombast, but given the above video I'd be making myself a liar. But it is in its way a peaceful peace.

Lay thine eyes upon it and thou shalt see that it is barren.

Maher's whole shtick―which some people purport not to get―is that he's a self-absorbed asshole, but one whose eyes are open to perceive something crucial about what's going on. Take it or leave it. At this point he must have lost count of how many times he's been cancelled. Enough times not to care anymore, which frees him up to say things on COVID-19, for example, rather at odds with the other leading political comics of the day.

Although I have to admit that like Howie, I prefer shoes without lace. Has nothing to do with germs, though. Laces just come untied and break all the time.
 

In theory

 According to Wikipedia, theory of mind is "the ability to attribute mental states such as beliefs, intents, desires, emotions and knowledge, among others, to oneself and to others." They also say it's "necessary to understanding that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one's own."

Well, I do understand that, so it's not like I entirely lack theory of mind. It could well be a little underdeveloped in me, though. That's probably one of the reasons I read a lot of reader-friendly psychology books. I'm always on the hunt for clues.

Of course having a well-developed TOM doesn't mean that it's going to be right. You've probably had the experience of having someone attribute a totally inaccurate motive to you.

A new man

 

On language

 Came across an interesting and witty article recently. No, really.

In wokese, if you say some sort of discrimination exists, you have to say it is “systemic.” It’s just a moral demand that if you talk about one thing, you also have to gesture toward another—but it pretends to be grammar. You do not actually have to explain how the system functions as a system in a way that removes the agency of the actors within it, and indeed you would be messing up the syntax if you did. This is sort of like the previously popular wokese term “problematic,” which unlike its English equivalent does not mean that the person using it intends to expound on what the problem is.

In Britain, they know they have a class system, whether they like it or not. We have on in the US as well, but it's hidden. Which means that when the aristocracy takes steps to keep the proles in their place, no one wants to say that that's what they're doing. And language is, as always, one of the prime ways of accomplishing that.

Oh well

 Bad luck on my part. I  went to a place where the bus didn't run after 6:30 and didn't start to suspect anything until well, well after seven. Maybe bad planning that I didn't look this up beforehand, but this place really should have some later service.

Ah well, at least I've been relaxing since I got home.

All this to say, what's it to you?

Gone

 The state of being neighbors in an apartment building is an involuntary condition. It's driven by the need for shelter and the landlord's judgment on who's an acceptable tenant. Still, sometimes you wind up with neighbors whom you actively enjoy living near. If you are that lucky, it's a shame when they have to leave. Especially if that departure is highly abrupt. Especially, especially if it's under conditions that strike you as unjust.

More than that I won't say in this forum. I'll be available to talk about it in some other, though.

Some dream description ahead. Apologies.

 The other night I dreamed that I walked into a room of my apartment, not necessarily the one I live in now. There was broken glass on the floor. Which made sense because the window suddenly had a great jagged hole in it. I flicked the switch, but the light wouldn't turn on, although I tried and tried.

What does it mean? Maybe something, maybe nothing. Does it point to a certain amount of anxiety? Well, not having any would be somewhat unusual. To be sure, though, it wasn't a "wake up screaming" situation. In essence I just remember it because I happened to have a full bladder at the time.

Also, since I started writing this, I've managed to stop my router battery from beeping. So I seem to be capable enough in real life.

Out back there

 

Kangaroos, even putting aside their marsupial attributes, aren't quite like anything that lives outside of Australia. Their heads are somewhat deerlike, but the way they get around is of course more reminiscent of rabbits, especially jackrabbits. But much bigger. And they're impressively tough, as well. How much of this is an adaptation to the harsh environment of the Outback, I wonder.

Failure to communicate

I recently came across a quote something along the lines of  "White people shouldn't be writing POC characters." I'm not sure how widespread this opinion is. Full disclosure #1: The person retweeting it was not in agreement. It's shortsighted anyway. White people who have James Baldwin quotes on their Instagram might well feel constrained by this edict. White people who lock their car doors while at a drive-thru restaurant with a black cashier, not so much. 

Somehow reading about some of the controversies surrounding <a href="https://quillette.com/2020/09/18/the-dishonest-and-misogynistic-hate-campaign-against-j-k-rowling/">JK Rowling</a> had me thinking along the same lines. Full disclosure #2: I haven't read the book Troubled Blood myself. The early Harry Potter books are the only thing I've read by her. But it does sound like a lot of anti-fans, haters, call them what you will are distorting what the book is about in order to stoke outrage. And maybe some people who used to like her have fallen out with her because of things she said. Fine, that's their right. But you can, you know, just kind of leave it there. Not everything has to be a crusade.

Breathe

 After getting through the entire spring without any real symptom of my allergies, it's a little annoying that they came back for the fall. I'd sort of hoped I had outgrown them. Maybe that was unrealistic, though.

Last night the sniffling and sneezing just wouldn't end, regardless of what I took. So tonight is an improvement on that score, anyway.

Separating the wheat

 A while ago I found out about a market soliciting short stories on a particular theme. Tonight I finished―blessedly―the first draft. It's about 1,000 words over the upper word limit. This isn't as huge a problem as you might think. In fact it's good. The whole thing needs to be overhauled, and I expect to lose more verbiage than I make up, even though I'll be doing both. So it's kind of a lucky break.

Of course the real lucky break is the fact that the deadline isn't until the end of October.

Smells like teen DOOM!

 I just watched Carrie tonight. Pretty enjoyable, on a scary movie level. While high school settings may have gotten more common as time went on, and teenage protagonists in horror movies are certainly a popular thing, having a horror movie largely take place at prom is a pretty unusual movie. De Palma, to his credit, embraces the idea, showing it in all its tacky mid-seventies glory.

Maybe the weirdest thing is the "based on the novel by" credit. Because when this movie came out, no one knew or really cared who Stephen King was. Just another name from the paperback racks.

Magic hat trick

 Probably the last on this theme for a while, but that doesn't mean forever.

An author named Michael Penkas wrote a story called "Coffee with Count Presto". It's probably hard to find because Penkas is a newish, mostly uncollected author. But anyway, it's about a man who receives an invitation to a private show with a magician named...well, you can guess. Presto is persona non grata among his colleagues because he's revealed his secrets. In fact, the other magicians track him to his coffee shop sit-down with the narrator and wreak terrible vengeance. 

The story is funny and maybe a little creepy. But it's very much fiction. Magicians don't want some snot jumping in front of the stage and pointing out where they hide the rabbits, but in principle they're not bothered by you understanding how they do what they do.

This has become clearer to me recently as I've been reading Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions by Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde. The book breaks down some common stage illusions and explains how they relate to our senses and perception. The short version is that in most cases, the "secrets of magic" come down to the limits of the human nervous system and the fact that you can't pay attention to absolutely everything.

As to why magicians―and a lot of them talk to the authors―don't mind their secrets being revealed, it's a matter of personal pride. They don't need or want to hide behind a cloak of mysticism. They're not court wizards. The thrill is in getting past the guard. They want you to understand the rules, to know that a trick is coming, and still be fooled.

Early & often

 Today was a primary day, so I went out and voted. It was my first time this year voting in person. For the Presidential primary I got a mail in ballot because in 2016 there was some kind of venue change in the primary vote and I had to go looking for the place, which I didn't want to deal with again. COVID was a minor consideration, except for the obvious fact that it wind up pushing the primary back by two months.

I can attest that the the page we used to sign has gone paperless, which seems counterproductive since it just gives them a screen they have to keep wiping off. And there's a pen you use for that which you use the other end of for actual voting. This you throw in a plastic bag at the end of the process. Said process looks like it has become more awkward and less friendly, which sadly you learn to expect.

You don't...you don't ask why

 

Here's a fun little read. In two parts, it's an X-ray examination of Roxy Music's "For Your Pleasure", the song, with a little about For Your Pleasure, the album. Rich topics, both.

The song is the final track on the album, and For Your Pleasure, the album is one of only two RM albums to feature Brian Eno, the other being their self-titled debut. That means this is the very dramatic end of Eno's tenure.

Why did he leave? Or alternately, why did Ferry fire him? The anonymous author cites the theory that "Eno’s super-hyped sex life" was responsible, but he rejects it himself. And rightly so. That seems like it would only be an issue for Ferry if Eno hit on Ferry's girlfriend, successfully or not. And do you think everyone could have kept dish like that to themselves for all these years?

No, the divorce was more likely caused by the parties no longer seeing eye to eye. Roxy had started as a certain kind of band, one that Eno could claim involvement in despite his rawness as a musician. (If a good musician is defined by what he can do and a great one by what he's willing to try, Eno was great a long time before he was good.) But the band changed, and he changed, becoming less the wild showman of Roxy and his solo debut Here Come the Warm Jets. If it's a sad ending, it might be a necessary one for both. 

Now what's not addressed in these essays at all is the role of Judi Dench, whose voice is the last one heard on the song and the album. When the album was recorded she was mostly known as a TV and theatre actress, although a few years earlier she had played Titania in Peter Hall's film of A Midsummer Night's Dream, as seen here.

So how did she get to be involved? It's not something I've ever heard addressed, but it seems like there could be a good story there.

Huh.

 

This is a preview of the Batman movie that's coming out next year. I guess you could say they have my attention, but not really my approval.

Obviously, Robert Pattinson was cast for a reason. Namely, that no matter how much you build him up, he's still going to look sickly. That's why you turn to the sexxxy vampire.

Even more obviously, David Fincher's Seven was a model at every level of creation here. The Riddler's brain teaser crimes have in the past generally not made you wonder which severed body parts he has on-hand, but maybe that's changing. To top it off the trailer is scored with one of the few Nirvana songs that's actually as depressing as the stereotype of the band. Someone's betting on there being a demand for meticulously recreated 90's grimdark.

Ironically, the original Seven's release coincided with Batman movies attempting to go back to a campier 60's approach. It didn't really work, because that kind of approach requires a light touch, which Joel Schumacher didn't have. Still, maybe in another 10 years or so.

H2O yeah that's right

 In terms of the reservoir and in terms of healthy plant life we've been in need of rain, and a lot of it. We got some today. Enough to help.

Better for me that it wasn't too hard or too long. Today was my laundry day, and it's never fun to take clothes out of the drier and head out into cold, bitter rain. And my timing was okay, as I just had to go across the street and wait a couple of minutes for the bus.

So, a balance.

Vanishing act

 

Here's another fun thing. I got a copy of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes from the library. As it turned out, the disc that actually held the movie on it was damaged and wouldn't play on my VCR. But I found the movie on Dailymotion so was still able to watch it.

The main story is pretty exciting and clever. Not only, per the title, is someone kidnapped. She disappears, and no one but the heroine will even credit that she was there. One interesting factor is that most people aren't in on the conspiracy. They just don't want to get involved.

The side characters of Charters and Caldicott were so popular that, even though Hitchcock never used them again, they got their own film series. You can see why.

Ah, kids

 

Syndicated comics are in a sorry state. Newspapers will only give them a postage stamp worth of space for art. Bill Watterson fought against the trend, of course, but he's long gone. Most strips are done by faceless interns, the original creators being retired or expired. Anyone creative would prefer to be their own boss by putting a PayPal link under their webcomic.

Luckily, Will Henry, the artist and writer of Wallace the Brave, seems not to have heard about any of this. He creates beautiful, off-kilter artwork for his strip, apparently in the faith that somebody somewhere will appreciate it. And while Wallace isn't as fascinating a character as young Calvin, it's really more of an ensemble piece.

Plus, the strip takes place in South County, where Henry is from, so it's another bit of Rhode Island pride.

More voices in the choir

 While I could maybe address this in the comments, I thought it might be worth exploring why I posted a particular guest from Penn and Teller: Fool Us a few days ago. A female guest, as it happens. And that's significant because, well, how many female stage magicians do you hear about, anyway? The field seems to be heavily slanted towards the wand, with the top hat hardly getting a chance to shine at all.[/Freud] Women are free to do the kind of magic that gets you burned at the stake, but otherwise...I don't know, is it considered cheating to have boobs when you do sleight of hand?

Samuel Johnson, wise in most cases, is reported to have said, "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." While the apparent sexism isn't in fashion now, the tenet that certain things can be dismissed as novelty for novelty's sake still gets a lot of play. But I don't entirely agree. And for certain, I think it's worth paying attention to when people do something or create something that they're not really expected to on a demographic basis. Like when black musicians play in genres that tend to be considered "white." (country, heavy metal, punk, etc) It's interesting to see how they do things differently, or don't do them differently for that matter.

Perro y gato

So there's a dog and a cat in this Spanish short. Their hipster owners smoke half a joint, then go out without roaching it. The dog and cat get high and then...

Well, I doubt that second hand cannabis smoke would have much of an effect unless they were really close. Certainly not the hallucinations seen here, not without some strong additives. In general, though, don't leave stuff burning in your apartment when you go out.

Guessing game

 Not sure if Penn in this clip actually has the answer right as to what this British magician did to get the right answer in her mentalist act. His hypothesis is kind of wordy. Well, that's to be expected. What he seems to be saying is that she listened to the crowd response, which could work but could also lead her astray. I was thinking that each block maybe was filed a certain way so as to make a certain identifiable sound?

The drift

Tokyo Drifter, directed by Seijun Suzuki, is a 1967 Japanese gangster movie. Actually, though, it's a Western. 

Phoenix Tetsu is an ex-Yakuza. The "ex" is because his boss has gone straight, and he's gone along straight with him and is trying to honor that. Rival Yakuza want to take over the nightclub that they run, but really what they seem to want is to make Tetsu fall.

It's not really a plot-heavy movie. The colors are more the point. There are a lot of them, and hairpin edits, weird visual touches. Revolving around a discotheque, it takes a certain infectious pride in its artificiality.

 

One state over

 Kate was lucky, as far as servants go. Her master and mistress were wealthy., and she lived a comfortable life working for them. The last thing she would want would be to jeopardize her job with them and be cast out on the streets for some bizarre ailment she'd become afflicted with that couldn't be explained. Rather than risk losing her job and the life she'd grown accustomed to, and realizing that the attacks were increasing in intensity and frequency and could no longer be hidden, Kate may have consciously chosen to blame it on a couple of women she knew her masters didn't get along with. Or maybe she truly believed she was bewitched; it didn't take much to make one believe such a thing in those days. At any rate, Elizabeth Clawson and Mercy Disborough were brought to trial, and the entire community became involved in the outcome.

Preceding is a passage from Haunted Connecticut: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Constitution State.

The Stamford Witch Trials of 1692 have very much been overshadowed by those occurring in Salem, Massachusetts to the north in the same year. In terms of inherent drama, this is understandable. Still, the Connecticut trials were pretty fascinating in themselves. What distinguishes them is the relatively happy ending that resulted. Innocent people were accused and convicted, but they weren't put to death. In fact the people of Stanford, or at least enough of them to make a difference, seem to have concluded that this system of accusation and punishment was no longer right for the society they wanted to build. Witch trials were discontinued.

Backwards and forwards

 I was just thinking about Etruscan writing. Okay, you'll just have to go with me on this one. Etruscan was not closely related to any surviving European languages, falling outside the Indo-European family. But the alphabet was similar to the Romans', which we use in modified form today. Similar, but they wrote from right to left, as in the Hebrew language.

Left to right seems more intuitive for right handed people, as most people are. So I wonder whether there are any larger cultural differences between those whose language is written one way or the other.

Cool & grey

 Today for a long time it felt like it was going to rain, the skies being overcast and there being some moisture in the air. The clouds did spit a little, but it never really opened up. Which was admittedly handy for me, as I still had errands to do.

But it did cool things off. Especially after sunset. I had my ceiling fan going, it's usually on its highest setting these days. But I had to turn it off tonight, and I haven't turned it back on since. Also I changed into long pants and have a sweater nearby. It's an odd feeling, but not necessarily a bad one.

Why I am likely to vote for Joe Biden this November

 You've most likely heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The term "imaginary superiority" arises very quickly, and that's key. If you think you know everything, that gives you little reason to learn more, or even think.

The problem with having Donald Trump as President is that there's nothing to figure out. A handsy real estate grifter who looks like Barney Rubble gone to seed doesn't have a very large bag of tricks, and it doesn't take a lot of vision to see through him. Yet anti-Trumpists often act like they're at the height of savvy.

I'm not optimistic about how successful a President Joe Biden would be, or even if he has goals I'd want him to succeed at. He's been running for the top office for most of my life, seemingly just for the sake of it. But at least if voters start to hate him after he's been elected, they might have to exercise some critical thinking in order to do so.

Luckily he didn't pick Gretchen Whitmer as his running mate. After the way she's been governing Michigan under COVID-19, that would have made it hard for me to pull the lever.

Go fish

 I've seen a clip of a seahorse giving birth. It was a little unnerving. Not because it was a male, as happens to be the case in that corner of the animal kingdom. You can't really tell the gender. It's just because it goes on so long, and so many embryonic fish come out at once.

But that's how it is among a lot of creatures. In fact for the most part parenting, the personal raising of young that you get to know, is limited to the higher vertebrates (i.e. mammals, birds, and reptiles.) To us, nature itself can be scary.

In the pages

The library is still not a place to spend time. Like literally, you can't. You can go in to return things you've taken out and are done reading, watching, etc. You can pick new items up. But once you're done with that there's nothing to do but leave.

One consequence of that is that I forgot their scheduling quirks. With a lot of holiday Mondays they close on Saturday as well to make it a three day weekend. Over the past year or so I had finally started thinking ahead to the next big holiday that might effect the schedule so I could plan around the closings. But when they close for a few weeks and then when they reopen their schedule is still mostly non-functioning, that makes it harder to orient yourself. 

Still, I'm glad the library system is there to get stuff to read and watch. One book I just finished is Peter De Vries's <i>Mrs. Wallop</i>. It's kind of a clever little comedy. A landlady is excited to read her tenant's newly published novel, but is put out to find an unflattering portrayal in it of a landlady character. Except that when she discusses it with him later he tells her the character is really a disguised portrait of his own mother. In the same conversation, she proudly tells him that her own son has been working on a novel himself. As it turns out, the son has some uncomplimentary things to say about his own mother. This doesn't make Mrs. Wallop happy, but her response is not quite what you'd expect. 

Also been reading a book called <i>Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s</i> by Cara Greenberg. Combining image and text, it tackles some of the same topics as Tom Wolfe's <i>From Bauhaus to Our House</i>, but Greenberg is more of a Bauhaus defender it seems. I'm neutral in the fight. Sharp design is a delight, of course, but everything gets complicated by real life.

Arachne

I don't know if I've highlighted the work of Sarah Sze on this blog before. She's a fascinating figure in contemporary art. Since she's talking about reinstalling a piece that was put away for nineteen years, I guess she's proven she's no flash in the pan.

One thing about her sculptures/installations is that a lot of them look ridiculously complex if you're taking count of each individual element. Look at the shadows that they cast and it's a different story. That must be one of the top things she thinks about, how everything will be lit.

You don't have the power

This morning I went to the laundromat and, despite the fact that this was most definitely within their hours of operation, they were closed. On the way I passed several traffic lights that were out, on foot and on the bus, but I when I got to the laundry I still didn't put it together. My first priority was finding another place to do the wash. After this was done I returned to the same neighborhood to wait for the bus home. That's when I saw the sign in an Asian restaurant door saying they were closed due to a power failure. Apparently this was quite widespread. Caused by a storm that happened yesterday. I lost power myself yesterday for like, a second, but otherwise was unaffected. So while the whole thing caused problems for me, I was quite lucky in another way.

The new view

As of today, apparently, when you log into blogger you see something like the above image. Which affords a kind of picture-book feel which I approve of. Better yet it appears that the formatting process has gone back to something much more intuitive. I'm not sure that I trust Google as far as I can throw it, mainly because just saying that is going to get me all sorts of weird search results. Still, I recognize these as positive changes.

Give the scum a gun and let the bugger fight

While I've seen John Boorman's Hope and Glory it was a long time ago. I know it's an autobiographical film about his childhood during the Blitz and World War II in general, that's about it. So I can say with some authority that even though Queen and Country is a sequel to the earlier film, you don't need to have seen one to understand and enjoy the other.

This is also a film around war, specifically concerning a training camp in the British army during the Korean War. It's late in the war, as references to Eisenhower and the coronation of Elizabeth II attest. That means that the horrors of war don't come into play as much. Bill, the Boorman stand-in, apparently is never shipped off, nor is his closest friend on the base. There is some, due to other soldiers having to fight in Korea, and also some traumatic memories from WW2, but it's not like you really have to strap in.

Three performances really stand out. David Thewlis always meets pretty high standards, and exceeds them here as a brittle disciplinarian of an officer, moreso than he initially seems. Caleb Landry Jones plays Bill's friend Percy, who is epically unsuited to army life. I wasn't much familiar with Jones, and he does working class Brit so well that I was shocked to learn that he's Texas born and Bred. And the Welsh actress Aimee-Ffion Edwards brings life to all her scenes as a nurse who starts out with one of the young men but really has eyes for the other. If you don't know her now you will, if there's any justice in the world.

Odd note. Bill mentions in a lecture to junior cadets that Korea is bitter cold so have families send jumpers, long underwear, etc. I may have heard this before, but it's never penetrated. As with many people, my familiarity with the Korean War mainly comes from MASH, which was filmed in the sub-desert of Southern California and thus made the country look like just one big wave of dry heat.

You're number one...

I picked up a new fan this week. At CVS, and there were a couple of different deals in effect, so I got it at a significant discount. It was definitely necessary, though. We've had a wicked heat wave the last couple of weeks. Now it's moderated, if not quite ended. That won't be the last, though. You never get through August without some scorchers. Summer might not even end until October.

Picture it

Out on my rounds today I saw a couple of kids with a view camera on the river. I call them "kids." They were probably RISD students but seemed like they'd be underclassmen, or could have even been mature and hirsute high-schoolers. But they very definitely did have a view camera on a tripod aimed at the water. This struck me securely enough that I chatted with them about it for a few seconds.

Film is supposed to be dead. Large format photography like that predeceased it. And you don't really expect to see people of any age engaging in time-intensive hobbies like that. So it's a pleasant surprise.

Pieces on the board

Firekites - AUTUMN STORY - chalk animation from Lucinda Schreiber on Vimeo.

The song is pretty nice. It's by an Australian band I'm not familiar with otherwise. But I'm really here because I'm really here because I'm a sucker for a good alternative process animated work. (In truth any hand drawn animation can be called an alternative process at this point.) This one makes fine use of chalk's tendency to leave traces of itself behind, which you might think is a disadvantage. Extra credit for using more than one chalkboard.

Eye opener

I discovered the work of  Jens Retlev just today.*  Several paintings of his hang on the walls of a Swedish cafe that his wife manages. One that particularly grabbed me isn't on his website. And also, or course, his work does lose something in the translation from paint to pixels. But even a suggestion is pretty impressive.

* Pronounced with a "y" sound? You bet!

The greatest show on Earth

This Canadian puppet show is obviously for little kids, but that doesn't stop it from being clever or possessing a certain dark humor. A ringmaster who doesn't bother giving the new lion tamer any special training could be seen as either evil or dumb, but not terribly good at their job either way. You'll see the twist ending coming, but it's still a good one.

Mercury's up there

Okay, so I messed up looking at Ventusky last night. It turns out that if you don't actually click on your city the service defaults to showing you the weather for Zagreb or someplace like that. Lucky Croats. So the temperature is in the low 90s tonight and probably was last night as well. Ah well, nothing I haven't faced before.

 If nothing else it's a sign to change from red to white if you like having wine at dinner. And there's certainly nothing wrong with a nice chilled pinot grigio.

Men, women, children, dogs

I was invited to a friend's house for dinner this weekend and wound up going earlier tonight. It was mostly quite nice, partly because I was seeing people I hadn't seen in months. Plus a relative (his, not mine) whom I'd never met before.

Met the dogs again too. Actually this time there were three, another guest having brought his Shepherd/something else mix. They were fun. It's hard to believe that, after a bite experience, I went through several years of being afraid of dogs. Except for ours, of course.

Rock on

Grady Hendrix has started to get a reputation for taking on crazy premises in his books and—at least for those kindly disposed—making them work. I read We Sold Our Souls a year or two ago and recently decided to reread it. It does hold up pretty well.

Basically, twenty years a metal band with big dreams got into a serious auto accident. Their main songwriter and lead guitarist Kris Pulaski was at the wheel, but there's time missing from that scenario. Her life was ruined, which is true of a couple of her bandmates too. But not the lead singer, Terry, whose lawyers were behind some sinister contracts they signed.

Hendrix has enough discipline as a writer for there to be a clear through-line to the events. But he's bold enough to put some crazy stuff on that line. Eventually it falls into a rhythm.

Follow suit

There's a haberdasher not far from here, both old fashioned and posh. The fact that it's surprised into the present has to be counted as some kind of accomplishment.

Aside from noting its continued presence, though, I had never taken much notice of it. But in passing recently I've observed a change in their stock. The suits on the headless mannequins are dandyish beyond belief. Brightly colored jackets with patterned lining and baroque neckties.

A reaction, perhaps, to uniform COVID-era sterility. Maybe and maybe not. This style isn't something I expect to see on every corner, but it might be a harbinger in its way.

Love and laughter in 4:3

I finally got around to seeing The Artist on Friday. This is of course the award winning French comedy about a silent film actor who goes from hero to zero when talkies hit, and the slightly stalkerish starlet who does her best to help him. While it's a French movie, it was shot in Hollywood and features a number of well known Anglophone actors (e.g. John Goodman, Malcolm McDowell, Missi Pyle). Ergo what little spoken dialogue there is is actually in English.

Not half bad. It drags a little in presenting George's self destructive downfall, and I think storywise it could have been shortened by ten minutes or so. But, well, that's show biz.

Hitting return

So is there a constituency for manual typewriters in the inherently scary-sounding year of 2020? As it turns out, yes. And it's not hard to see why. These old beaters look and sound great if they're taken care of. There's obviously a lot of history behind them, your favorite author having used one if it's not Thomas Wolfe, who wrote his novels in longhand while leaning on a fridge. And as an internet meme (irony? what irony?) points out, they don't annoy you every 15 seconds with popups.

 I have enough Luddite in me to long for good ol' tap-driven writing. My reality principle is sufficiently developed to know that it's not going to work for me. The thing about the writing world is that a lot of markets disappear overnight when you're just learning about them. And the thing about the writing world right now is that most of them accept electronic submissions exclusively. There are buyers out there where I can't even find out what state they're in. Besides panic, obviously. But even though typewriters represent an impossible dream, I'm heartened that someone is still out there dreaming it.

Tonic

I was feeling a little sluggish today so I put on this record figuring it might pick me up. It worked. Like really worked. And I couldn't tell you exactly why.

That's an upside of not being a musician. I could analyze lyrics, I suppose. I know really basic stuff like, "It's not a chord unless there's more than one note playing at the same time." But why some songs have certain effects? It's a mystery. A miraculous mystery.

And a good thing, too. I can only ingest so much sugar and caffeine, so they can use all the help they can get.

Walk under ladders

I used to tell myself that I could stand up to everyone. That if I saw the whole world going wrong, I would stick to my idea of what was right. Not sure if I ever actually believed this, though. Until now.

Don't get me wrong. When I say everybody, I don't mean literally everybody. And not everybody to the same extent. I have supportive family, friends, a few places to look for answers.

One thing I've done is to cut down my news intake by a lot. Some other people have also done this, and for strikingly similar reasons as me. Here is the thing. It's all fun and games to read a few things you accept are true, a few others that you know aren't quite true, and a lot you don't have a firm opinion on. But when you're just taking in lie after lie for weeks on end, it takes a big toll.

Really I should have seen this coming a few years ago when I first saw them batting around the phrase "an almost alcoholic", gibberish syllables that can barely even aspire to being words. Can you get your drank on or not?

But through all this my decisiveness and overall morale have been growing. Decisions I would have agonized over in the past aren't so hard. And people I actually meet tend to react with a new kind of respect. It's not the confidence builder I would have chosen, but it's the one we got.

XI/III/MMXX

There is an old Chinese curse translated as "May you live in interesting times." China is still around, so it's free to judge whether the curse is currently being fulfilled.

Looking at the current landscape I wouldn't say that Joe Biden can win in November. On the other hand, I think that Trump is quite capable of losing. Overall I'd say that this is the most likely result.

In other news I learned today that the popular phrase "you sweet summer child" comes from George RR Martin's "Ice and Fire" books. That actually is kind of interesting. I had no idea how new or how old the saying was.

Something green

My daily walk took me a little further today. To Dorrance Street, just short of Eddy. I was walking by the river as I like to do, and just crossed the street at a different point, so that Dorrance was a natural place to go.

And I kept on that track because I could see a park. When I say "park" it's a very small space, about a block. But it had a good selection of trees, open and attractive in the sunlight. It was a place I hadn't even really noticed until I had more time. The world presents us with beauty, even if it sometimes seems to be in spite of itself.

Homogeneous

While lacking the money and inclination it would take to get into hard drugs, I have heard things. Something I've read about is that dealers will entice a prospective customer with the best product, that which will give you the purest effect, and this will be below their usual cost as well. Of course once said customer is hooked, they will be expected to pay full price, and for less distinguished product as well. At this point they're considered to have no choice.

For a while it's seemed to me that the internet has been pulling the same game on, well, all of us. Where there used to be a fascinating variety of features and voices, now you have a mindnumbing monotony that can't even hold your interest long enough to repel it. An especially sad decline can be seen in the area of fansites, where loving online shrines have been replaced by dull official sites and social media accounts. And while this is partly due to the migration of internet usage to phones with smaller screens, there's also a question of plain indifference.

And 20-25 years ago, when print media started to go into an obvious decline, we were told that it didn't matter, that the web would not only pick up the slack but bring more variety and beauty to the media. It sounded too good to be true, and as things have panned out, it wasn't.

Tromatic upbringing

Am now currently reading and enjoying Make Your Own Damn Movie!, a nonfiction book by Lloyd Kaufman. Am I planning on making a movie myself? No, not necessarily. On the other hand, being able to write one and get it made is the kind of goal that could spur me on to other things I want to do. And thus far there has been some useful advice, especially about finding financing.

In the early chapters there are quite a few swipes at Harvey Weinstein. Apparently back in 2003 when the book was written, Weinstein was the rival that Kaufman could never catch up with. With Weinstein's troubles now I'd bet that Kaufman is quite a bit less envious. After all, no one's ever accused him of raping anyone...EXCEPT YOUR MIND!

Whatever

If you have any interest in writing, you probably know that there is plenty of advice out there to be had: lots of classes, how-to books, specialty magazines. For me only a small percentage of these are of any use at all to a creative individual, and after a certain point they become actively harmful. The problem is that the authors pass along things that have worked for them in terms of output and sales. These methods may or may not have helped them do their best work as well. In either case, the problem is that it's not a replicable skill where the same things will work for everyone. The consumers of these lessons fall under the category of "everyone" so they wish that this were not so.

Perhaps the prime example is the emphasis on creating conflict in your fiction. A story isn't a story, they say, unless two or more people are at odds, or one character has a goal and a problem in achieving it. Perhaps. But telling a writer that they need conflict is like telling someone they need to breathe. If you produce 1,000 words on any topic, some kind of conflict will be present. And in writing conflict, as in breathing, if you concentrate on achieving it you're going to run into more problems than if you just don't think about it.

In witch we...

Are Alfred Hitchcock episodes starring James Franciscus about to become the focus of this blog? Sad to say, I don't think there are enough of them to keep the concept going. Still, it's a nice thought.

"Summer Shade" is one of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes that came after Rod Serling made a splash with The Twilight Zone, and it's not shy about swimming in the same pool. A married couple (Franciscus and Julie Adams) drive around Salem, Massachusetts, looking for a home where they can raise their daughter (Susan Gordon). Just as they're ready to give up, they find a quaint house that the owner (Charity Grace) is putting up for sale. The daughter is happy there, but the parents are concerned that she's spending too much time with her imaginary friend, a friend whom she seems to have made up after reading an ancient tome on Puritan New England.

Going further into spoiler territory would do nothing to elucidate what makes this story work. It's just too weird, and that's what makes it work, partly. The setting is Salem, and while the Witch Trials took place in what is now known as Danvers, most fiction has always found that irrelevant. In this case the city of Salem is presented, albeit tacitly, as a tourist trap where the reputation of black magic is as vital to it as the beaches are to Atlantic City. Real estate signs show witches on brooms, and the woman selling the house wears a witch hat, which the protagonists don't even think anything of.

Everyone commits to the weirdness, and I would make an educated guess that this starts with Nora H. Caplan, who wrote the original short story. The weirdness isn't random. It points in a certain direction. And it defines everything, even the details that seem mundane. That's what it means to have a vision.

Glad rags

Burlington Coat Factory is open again. After an extended period in which clothing stores around here had to close, this is a good thing. The thing is, speaking as an adult male shopper, their selection has been nonexistent since reopening. The socks and underwear sections have been bare, heh-heh. And I've looked to buy a couple of new short-sleeved shirts, but there's nothing in Large. Medium would have worked for me in high school, but not now, and for Extra Large I'd have to gain 60 pounds. So someone must be buying up all the clothes that would fit me and smoking them.

This is the year that isn't

From a story attempting to add a little perspective to the current crisis, the number of Americans who consider themselves "very happy" appears to be at an all time low, at least while these things have been measured. How much of that is down to their extremely constricted social lives? Quite a bit, I would guess.

I'm fairly lucky. As a natural introvert, I need to be in contact with other folks some of the time, but not all or even most. I have family and friends that I've been able to keep in touch with some way or another, and that includes at least a couple of friends I've met with in person all the way through. On walks outside I catch sight of people and sometimes exchange greetings. Today I dined in at a breakfast place I like a lot which just recently reopened.

The only thing that really bothers me is that we're still hearing the rhetoric of "can't do this, can't do that, everyone will die." The evidence that COVID-19 was an unprecedented plague was always thin on the ground, and at this point the idea is completely in tatters, yet some people want their deadly pandemic and will have it. Even there, it's not so much the people lying that depress me as those who've fallen for it. Or just haven't thought about it, somehow.

The joke's on you

So as to this story...You can see the skit above, unless YouTube removes it, which who knows? I think it's pretty funny. The cop played by Keegan-Michael Key has a lot to do with that, doing a...you know, it's not even a slow burn, just total bafflement with what this guy's deal is.

In a year where nuance seems to have crawled off to join the pile of corpses, it's not too surprising that Netflix has pulled it from their service. What is surprising, and kind of encouraging, is that Cross and Odenkirk have managed not to grovel. They actually expect their audience to show some understanding of where they're coming from. This is more sensible, if less fashionable, than claiming they were ignorant of the existence of racism when they wrote a comedy skit about racism.

Atsa real good

Yeah, another video post. Sue me.

I heard this scene on a radio station a little earlier tonight and had to dig up where it was from. Animal Crackers, an early one.

You have to hand it to Chico. It's hard enough to keep up with Groucho, one of the funniest men to have ever walked the earth. But Chico actually gets a chuckle out of Margaret Dumont. Italians tended to like his portrayal as well. He sort of codified the bad Italian accent.

What of the Carpenter? What of the Eggmen?

Interesting that the walrus is shown to be having such trouble getting back into the water. And keep in mind that this is a healthy specimen, the leader of the pack. So is this just an awkward evolutionary landing for the species? Are they destined to ultimately take to the seas full time? Or does the land hold something for them that will keep them coming back?

Time will tell, whether or not we're around to hear it.

Heroic vices?

Can vices be heroic? It's something I've been thinking about.

I don't want to denigrate idealism, youthful or otherwise. It has its place, certainly. But the things that make up your best self: altruism, integrity, honesty. It often seems like all these things can be bullied out of you under the right circumstances. Bullied out, or twisted so hard that you think your practicing them when really you're just filling out someone else's agenda.

The vices, things like cynicism, laziness, and gluttony, they're old reliables. And they can throw a monkey wrench into the plans of people who might be doing harm in the long run.

So I don't want to make rash decisions about which traits are heroic and which aren't. I can only say that it's a good thing they're all on the table.

Screw your courage to the sticking place

Robert Sikoryak is a name I've only started to hear and thus appreciate in the past few years. He's a brilliant magpie, able to retell just about any story with new details that stand its idea in itself.

So what would the "Scottish play" look like if it were a comics feature set at a sleepy Southern California condo? Now we have an inkling.