Time

A thousand years ago if it was dark outside your window, that was pretty much all you knew. The rich had clocks to tell the precise hour, but most didn't. Anyway, the clock changed little. If it was seven at night for you, you wouldn't think of it being otherwise for anyone else.

In practical terms this is in a way still true. But now we know of the whole wide world, divided into 24 segments. We know our time isn't quite universal, even if its progression is.

This post, a little idle musing, brought to you by Vivaldi, with which I recently replaced Opera. No regrets there.

The life in the water

Shark-tears make the sea from Ýrúrarí on Vimeo.

Life continues. It changes, reverses, sometimes disturbs. But it remains what it is and exhibits the principles of life.

Of course sweatshirts with shark teeth do make you scratch your head.

Let there be...

All day there's been a National Grid truck across the street. National Grid is the predominant electric company in this area. I heard voices coming from the radio on the truck, but couldn't make out what they were saying. Tonight there was also a police car and a whole bunch of traffic cones lining the street.

It looks to me now like they may be relighting one of the street lights. About across the street from my building there's a pole, but it hasn't produced light for months. Which was kind of annoying, if nothing else, so if that is the case I'll be glad for the change.

humor

You never know about people. When you scream in a library, they tell you to hush up. When you scream on an airplane, everyone joins in.

(Can't claim to have entirely thought of that one, but the person who did is unknown to me, albeit heroic.)

Tales of two frontmen

This column is kind of a wryly funny thing. The author, as stated, is a musician. The lead guitarist for the Walkmen, from what I understand. But he's got a gently acerbic voice I like.

In a response to one of these letters he reveals that Lux Interior was nicer to him than Frank Black. Which doesn't surprise me, really. I mean, the Cramps was basically just him and Ivy, so they went through a lot of side players, but there doesn't seem to have been that much drama about it, so maybe not as much in the way of hurt feelings.

Twins

There's a story by Muriel Spark - called "Twins" - that I reread today and am coming to a new understanding of.

A woman stays with an old friend and her husband. This couple has two children, fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. The narrator is initially charmed by the children, but gradually picks up on things she doesn't like: deceptiveness, pettiness, passive-aggressive needling. As time wears on she notices similar things about the parents, although she'd thought very highly of them before.

The implication, made explicit near the end, is that the children have reshaped the parents in their own image, a dark interpretation of Wordsworth's "the child is father to the man." But might she be an unreliable narrator? It seems to me that she may have seen her friend and the friend's husband through rose-colored glasses before, and is now seeing in their kids what never made an impression on her before.

I like to think that in my own case, I've taken my friends' darker sides into account and more or less forgiven them for it. So while I may or may not get along with their kids, I'm not shocked or disappointed.

Icy hands

I carry a pair of good winter gloves in my coat. Just for emergencies really. I haven't worn them, or hardly at all, all winter.

Until today. Definitely had to warm up my digits during a longer than expected wait for the bus, and wound up wearing them until it came.

And it's the day after Saint Patrick's Day. Winter is putting up a fight. Impressive and kind of cool. No pun intended.

Wear sunscreen

With a couple of brief exceptions, I had never really read Isaac Asimov.

Yeah, I know, Martin. And it did seem like a gap in my education. So I decided to read The Naked Sun.

It's a detective story as well, which was Asimov's other great love. A detective from Earth, which is considered a backwater in the far future, is assigned to investigate a locked room murder on one of the tonier colony worlds. A world with a culture that seems strange to him and undoubtedly to most readers of the 20th century. He's assigned the eerily humanoid robot R. Daneel Olivaw as a partner. And let me tell you, if Asimov had wanted to start trouble with the Star Trek people over Data, he could have.

What's funny is that you can tell that Asimov is writing in the pulp era, but he's a fundamentally polite writer. And he's one of the science fiction authors for whom characters exist to carry out his ideas, but his ideas do carry the show.

The Chattering Teeth

This is a brisk documentary on Talking Heads, whom I don't have to sell you on. You know they're cool.

On t'other hand, the use of "on acid" as shorthand for "really, really, weird" irks me, especially when the subject isn't that weird. And some interview segments here raise the possibility that David Byrne is responsible for it. Oh well, my esteem for him is great enough that he can take the hit.

Man's definitely a high tenor when he talks, too.

Chiaroscuro

I have to admit that I somewhat discount people's opinions on movies when they say they won't watch anything in black & white. This is not because I believe all old movies are good. Believe me, I've seen enough counterexamples to know otherwise. But dull old movies, like most seriously bad movies, are done in by a lack of vision, not a lack of color. You don't need the same visual elements in every picture any more than you need the same seasonings at every meal.

I think literacy has slipped in terms of visual art in general. Color is a vital element of most painting. Less so in printmaking because of the labor intensity in applying different color inks, although this varies. Graphite drawings tend to be monochrome. And of course while sculpture can have color, it tends to be incidental. Being exposed to different kinds of art helps develop a sense of what's important visually.

Eye-opener

So I'm having breakfast at this place around here. Next to my table are a lot of men, all around the same age, early twenties I'd say. Sure it's a big party but I don't really make anything of it.

When I'm getting ready to leave, so are they. And suddenly they break into a lush a capella rendition of the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice."

The waitress was delighted. You could have knocked me over with a feather. There's video of me somewhere, gawking in amazement.

The nein tease

Blogger Phil Sandifer has noted that the 1990's are exempt from nostalgia in a way that previous eras aren't.

Say “the 1970s” and you’re suddenly transplanted to disco, bell bottoms, and the mysterious fascination with the color orange. Say “the 1980s” and you have primitive obsession with the electronic and bad hair. Heck, do a Google image search on “I love the n0s” where n is between 6 and 9. For the 70s and 80s, of course, you’ll get the logos for the delightfully awful VH1 series of those names (VH1 - purveyors of the finest terrible television to watch at 3am on American cable). For the 60s, which VH1 never covered, you’ll still get homebrew logos that are instantly recognizable as “the 1960s,” albeit the scarequoted version of that more than the actual one.

But “I love the 90s?” You’ll get the VH1 logos, sure, but there’s nothing like the instant dating of the aesthetic. Google “80s night” for about 350,000 hits. Try “90s night” and you’ll get 75k. The 1990s, unlike the three, and really four decades immediately prior, simply don’t register as a coherent system of nostalgia. The number of consensus touchstones is minimal. Musically you’ve got little more than the wave of alternative rock at the start of the decade. In film and television you’ve got a few more. But there’s no iconic and easy to encapsulate image of the 1990s.

Sandifer has a somewhat different viewpoint on this since he's a little younger than me. For me the 1990's weren't the time of my childhood or adolescence, but rather the time when I technically became an adult. (And how did that work out for me, you ask? Let's just say the jury's still out.) His blog is also focused on Doctor Who, which had its own travails at the end of the century. That is to say, the TV show had been canceled in 1989 and the attempt to revive it in America in 1996 was not a success. Nonetheless, I'd recommend his whole essay.

My own theory? Think of much of the twentieth century - the second half, you could say - as a party. Modestly wild and for the most part the kind of the occasion where you say "a good time was had by all."

What were the nineties like? Well, most of the hit TV shows, at least in this country, were on the broadcast networks, and they tended toward three-camera sitcoms and ensemble workplace dramas. The music charts were still determined by people going to the store to buy physical records - although the fact that these records were basically computer software would lead to the system's downfall - and those charts had a lot of what could broadly be called rock 'n' roll. Disney movies had lush, two-dimensional adaptation drawn by hand and could get away with sincere musical numbers.

If you'll notice, none of these things are unique markers. They're different from the way things are now, but not all that different from what had come before, immediately before. So if we return to the metaphor of the latter twentieth century as a party, the nineties were the last hour. The host and hostess are reluctantly refilling drinks and loudly saying "Is it really that late?" The guy who brought his guitar is still playing, but now he's ignoring everyone else and noodling away like he would at home. There's an ominous sound of morning birds chirping in the air.

No, this stage of the party will not make many people say, "Wow, can you believe that?"

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

The world can be a very strange place. Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes in a bad way. And sometimes in a way that just makes you shake your head and hardly leaves room for you to form an opinion.

In some ways this last is the most interesting, and maybe the most hopeful. It's an assurance that something is happening, at any rate.

More on this later, maybe.

Library notes

At the library I go to they've set up a 3D printer. It's part of a program they've set up across the Providence Community Library system. That and sewing machines and something else the librarian told me that I can't recall right now. I would guess it was part of a funding deal, public or private.

A fellow I know doesn't like the idea, says it's selling out the older patrons in the vain hope of getting teenagers into the library. I don't know. It doesn't really bother me. It doesn't take up needed space, as they set it up separately from the tables you can sit at and read the paper.

Mind you, it's only been a few days, but I haven't seen anyone use it yet. It seems to operate mostly at the level of etching ID bracelets and things like that. Kind of looks like an arcade claw machine that no one's remembered to stock with prizes.

Naw eastah

The rule of thumb for whether to use an umbrella comes down to two factors: wind and rain.

Light Rain/Low to No Wind: No harm in carrying one, as it could keep you almost totally dry. Not really necessary, though, if you're only going a short trip.

Light Rain/High Wind: Probably more trouble than it's worth. You'll get a little damp, but it dries off after a few minutes indoors. The umbrella could get damaged, and you want to save it for when you need it.

Heavy Rain/Low to No Wind: Well, that's what an umbrella is for, so you don't have to think too much about it.

Heavy Rain/High Wind: No win, here. If you don't use it, you'll get soaked. If you do, it stands a great chance of being destroyed. A wise man might tell you to just stay home.

Tonight I went out in what I knew would be some rain. They're calling it a nor'easter. It was definitely the fourth kind, although I didn't realize the extent of it when I went out. I had an umbrella with me, but for the most part I had to keep it folded up. Which, I don't know, might have made me look like a fool. Oh well.