from Façade

I've long been an admirer of Dame Edith Sitwell. You could call her poetry―sometimes breathless and sometimes meditative―eccentric. You could call it visionary. It carves out its own space in an enviable way. The poem cycle Façade is an early work, very colorful.

Apparently there was, at some point, a full jazz adaptation with vocalists Annie Ross and Cleo Laine. Ross, a lyricist as well as a singer, is someone else I love. How do I feel about this project? Not sure. Merits more investigation.

Cosmic debris

Been reading Martin Rees's Before the Beginning: Our Universe and Others over the past couple of weeks. It covers particle physics, string theory, the possibility of a multiverse, and a few other things. Is it a little over my head? Probably. Rees—a friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking―is a clear enough writer that you don't go away empty handed, though.

One thing I was glad to find out is that red shift only occurs between galaxies, not within them. So while other galaxies are hurtling away from us, even accelerating, other stars within the Milky Way or not. And Mars isn't creeping away from us or anything. It could come to that in the heat death of the universe, but so far we're good.

Other interesting bit, I guess you'd call it trivia, is about the steady state hypothesis, which proposed that the density of matter in the universe remains constant. Fred Hoyle and a couple of other physicists saw the British horror movie Dead of Night and the film's framing device helped inspire this hypothesis. Guess they weren't quite high enough to bring evil ventriloquist's dummies into it.

Time to turn in

Got a runny nose that won't quit right now. This might be attributable to my doing some long overdue cleaning up today. Very necessary, still ongoing. Also have a raw throat, since Wednesday when I ran screaming after a bus that I almost missed because he had the wrong sign in the window. Together with the chill that's not quite proportional to the actual cold in the air, and it looks like I need to get some sleep so as to repair this whole thing.

Another green world

One thing I check in on, now and then, is New Wave science fiction. Which generally means from the sixties, although some examples are from a little earlier and later, and certainly not every writer from the era qualifies.

This week I'm on Thomas M. Disch's The Genocides. It's a plants gone wild story. Or rather a story of aliens sending an invasive plant species in order to irrevocably alter our environment and eliminate us from it. Disch is pretty clear that these developments mean the end of humanity and an ignoble end at that. It's not uplifting, but it weaves a kind of fascinating spell. Also it's short, about 150 pages.

Disch wasn't real sunny in general, as you might guess from his eventually committing suicide. So it's kind of funny that the one work of his that's been brought to a broader audience through the magic of film is a children's book about anthropomorphic appliances.

Ceremony

Graduation ceremony earlier in the evening for my...what would you call it? Training program, I guess. It was nice to see my fellow students, probably the last time we'll all be together. Well, will keep getting together for a while for accounting classes, so the handful of us in that program will in theory be around for a while.

Since I was the first to get certified in Word and Excel they had me say a few words. That was kind of a thrill if a nervous one.

Also some good food on hand. Buffalo chicken on pizza works better than you'd think.

Frigid & frictionless

So we started with a moderate snowfall on Saturday night. By Sunday morning it was rain just above freezing temperatures. By Sunday night it had gotten much colder. In fact we've had considerably sub-zero temperatures and high winds ever since. The results have been interesting. As in, "All your friends and loved ones will beg you not to go outside."

Running on two tracks

Currently reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Rereading actually, after a few years in between. Reading it again brings back images of Rumford, Rhode Island, although I don't think I was still living there when I read it. Maybe I toted a copy with me on a couple of shopping trips?

In any case, it was fascinating then and it's fascinating now. Perhaps in different ways. The thing to understand is that the title indicates the modes the book is working in. Half of it is hard-boiled, but in a strange way. The narrator winds up in tough situations, but is mostly just prickly. The other half takes place at the end of the world, but more in a sense of "the edge of the map" than in any kind of conventional eschatology.

The reason these two narratives are veering away from each other is disturbing in one sense. In another, each of us contain contrasting multitudes. Isn't that a good thing?

Press return

Typewriters are not much used for typing anymore. I mean, this is an understatement. But they can still serve in another function. As a musical instrument the manual typewriter is filled with sprightly energy.



It doesn't just work in classical music either. Brian Eno, thinking outside the box, worked a typewriter solo into his Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy track "China My China." It adds to what was already a treacherous, unstable rhythm, reflective of the global politics the song explores.

Meeses

Ever see a mouse run? It's quite a sight. Not only are they small, but their legs aren't even very long in proportion. Yet they can really book it. Seems to have something to do with their flexible spines.

Their coloring isn't exciting. If  mouse isn't specially bred it's likely to be an undistinguished greyish brownish. But this is a great all-purpose camouflage.

Really their only weakness is that they seem compelled to live around humans. Not counting pet mice, this never ends happily.

cheers

I picked up a wine glass today. Just a single one. And yes, "picked up" is the right word.

I stopped at a bus stop early in the afternoon. I'm not a bus, but I was waiting for one. And on the metal bench it's too cold to sit on, there was a little wine glass. Remnants of wine were in the bottom, largely frozen.

This definitely seemed like a case of "waste not, want not." Especially since if you leave glassware out on the street like that, it's only a matter of time before some young hooligan will break it. Now I previously had one glass, the last of a set of four where the other three weren't so lucky. The old glass and the new-to-me one don't match, but you can't have everything.

Now how did it get to be there in the first place? I'm curious. Could have, I guess, been a wedding party where the reception was nearby and one of the guests went wandering off with the stemware.

Step into my orifice

Just watched David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. For various reasons I was sort of doing research on Cronenberg, and also this movie had always looked like it would be interesting. Which it is.

There's no point in describing the plot in much detail, since it winds up eating itself. But basic premise: Jennifer Jason Leigh is Allegra Miller, a world-famous video game designer in a future (?) where games are played on organic devices that plug into "bioports" in your spine. Jude Law is Ted Pikul, a junior publicity flak pressed into service as her bodyguard when an anti-game sect of "realists" marks her for death. He's never had a bioport because of a "phobia about being penetrated", and that's less a double entendre than just an entendre. Nonetheless they both escape into eXistenZ, her new game.

There's certainly a strange blurring of real and artificial here. While you expect to see video games and new tech in general introduced in spotless retreats, this one seems to be getting introduced in a church basement. Also the panoply of bad movie accents on display—British actor Law isn't playing a Canadian so much as he is a goober—get worked into a pretty good joke.

This seems to be the end of the line for a certain kind of Cronenberg movie, the kind he was making for micro-budgets back in the seventies. More recent films of his have been pitched more at the mainstream, or at least look it. A History of Violence was indeed violent, but in a blunt way. eXistenZ lets him bring out his grotesque sci-fi body horror toys one more time.

Hava Nagila

As of today I am a certified Microsoft Word user. Which I guess is the closest I can expect to giving a bar mitzvah speech.

Taking certification exams for software is kind of nerve wracking. There's a lot of factors that go into it. Certainly the fact that the questions on the final diverge greatly from those on the practice tests is part of it. And you can't look anything up.

The first sight of that passing grade, though, brings a profound relief.

Per anmum

Not as funny right now because I've bottled herself in oblivion.

Okay, wow. The above passage was written probably like 45 minutes after I took NyQuil to make sure I had a restful night. What was I trying to say? Not that, but as a longtime fan of the poetry of Sylvia Plath it's nice to know that I have a little bit of her bubbling under the skin.

Wet day, wet night

From the time I got up this morning until well into the night it was raining steadily today. For the most part not ridiculously thick. In the afternoon I walked down a couple of hills to the supermarket. I took my umbrella with me, although balancing that with the groceries was kind of a pain in the ass on the way back. When I was more than halfway home the rain got heavier. So even though I managed to avoid having any cars splash me, my jeans got soaked. They're on the radiator now. It is to be hoped they'll be dry again by tomorrow morning.

Still, I met someone I knew from an old job at the market and had a nice few minutes talking to them. Can't count myself too unlucky.

The conversation

Magpies in Hilton today from Rodney Stratton on Vimeo.

The title of the video says they're in a Hilton, but that hotel just looks like a tree. Maybe that's just what management knows their clientele prefer.

They have a nice lilting call, don't they?

But I'm trying, Ringo. I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd.

Back when I was...seven? eight? I was in a pageant at school. The nativity. I was one of the shepherds. Kind of froze onstage. It was a mixture of being the only non-Catholic in my class at that point and also general social anxiety.

This Sunday I'll be a shepherd in another pageant. The circumstances have changed somewhat. Hopefully the results will be different too.