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.