A marriage made in hell

 "Is this the end of the world?" asks this essay by the Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland. Mercifully it's less literal and more philosophical than the header might make you believe. The end of the world lies somewhere in the future, but what space does it occupy in our consciousness.

And there's a crystal-clear passage.

The thing is, in the Seventies, the end of the world seemed much nearer than it does right now. Nothing worked back then, and everything was fading and imploding and being smothered in oil and soot. The Seventies with an internet would have been an utter pit of despair. Which reminds me: I was in Toronto in 2003 during SARS Classic, which had a 16% kill rate and, to be honest, the city didn’t feel even remotely as doomy as it does now during Covid, which has a pathetic kill rate of, what, 0.3%? That’s what happens with an internet everywhere around you: it’s this sleepless beast that roams everywhere, poking shit with a stick all along the way, and waking up every conceivable sleeping dog it finds with a clanging pair of concert cymbals.

Obvious facts, but not put together all that often. Of course the SARS virus of 2003 was objectively scarier than the COVID bug that came 16 or 17 years later. And obviously it didn't have the same kind of impact. SARS made it into some panicked headlines and gallows humor jokes, but national stay-at-home orders and universal masking that extends into the next year? No one was even thinking about it.

Yet Coupland is a little off. There was, of course, an Internet in 2003. I know, because I was on it. Different, more primitive and at the same time more variegated, but it was definitely there. 

People had cell phones at the time as well. Maybe not quite as many. But that's not the real difference. 2003 was still the flip phone era. If you had a cell phone, you used it for phone calls and not much else. Now millennials and zoomers have become acclimated to an etiquette where making a phone call when you don't absolutely have to is a faux pas.

Somewhere along the line phones became wired so that you could easily reach the Internet from them. For some it was more convenient. But that's the problem. When you can plug into the infosphere from anywhere you happen to be, then the Internet and all the people on it become the "it all" that you can't or won't get away from. That's how problems get blown up into 800 lb. gorillas.

The Devil is in the details

 Feeling in a John Carpenter mood again, I watched Prince of Darkness tonight. It has to be one of his weirder movies.

Carpenter wrote it under the pseudonym "Martin Quatermass." This gives a hint to his attentions, as elements of the plot do seem inspired by Nigel Kneale's British teleplays featuring the scientist hero, especially Quatermass and the Pit. The monster that menaces the church full of grad students and Donald Pleasence's priest is really cosmic entropy, although it may collaborate with/impersonate the Devil. Victor Wong's character basically is Professor Quatermass, except Asian-American.

While there's a small army of scary homeless people led by Alice Cooper, I don't know that I'd call this an actor-driven movie. Which might be why most of the cast have if anything gotten more obscure since the movie was released a quarter century ago, and is definitely why the leading man prompts the thought "preppie porn star" every time he's onscreen. 

But Carpenter is playing an interesting game here. The scenes are all very short, accompanied by a relentless electronic score. Seemingly calm at first, they come to evoke a creepy sense of things falling apart.

Yellow fellows

 Providence is just a biggish city, not an enormous one. Still, we do see things here.

The other day I was downtown (no one says "downcity.") There was a lady at the bus stop. She was pushing a wheelchair. The seat of the wheelchair was filled by a Minions plushie doll. She was yelling and swearing at the MInions doll.

Should I have talked to herr? I don't know.

All comes out in the wash

 I have a little cut on my thumb. I got it because there was a little shard of glass embedded in the sole of my shoe. I had to get it out in a hurry because a bus was coming and perhaps foolishly used my bare hands to do so.

This is not to complain. It hurts in a dull way, probably more annoying than anything else. The point I'm making is that I expect the pain to be less when I get up tomorrow morning, and a little less the day after that. Sleep truly is a miracle drug.

meow?

My downstairs neighbor has a cat. Tomcat, black, quite big for a housecat. All indoors, though.

That's something that makes me curious. How many cat keepers let their furry little friends go out. I've seen websites saying that it's just a bad idea. There are downsides to it, like predation of birds and the risk that they'll just take off and not come back. So can you lower the risk of those things to an acceptable level?

I mean, I'd say I'm more of a dog person, but I like cats and would like to think most cat owners are doing right by them.

Than curse the darkness

Do I like Wallace Stevens? No, I love him. He ranks at the top of my list of favorite poets, up there with Edith Sitwell and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Do I like dramatic poetry readings? Sometimes. Depends on what the reader brings to the poem. Even if they're also the poet, it varies.

Does this recitations of "Carlos Among the Candles" work for me? Actually yes. Mainly because it doesn't sound like a "recitation" at all. The woman performing it gets at the conversational tone Stevens often drops into. A tone that doesn't decrease the sharpness of the verse at all. And yeah, she makes the most of the props as well.

Captain, ye don't have the power!

This probably isn't too rare for apartment buildings, but my building has certain emergency lights that aren't usually on and can't be switched on by the residents, but they're hooked up to a special emergency generator. So paradoxically, if you see that they are on, you know there's been a power failure. I came home today and saw that these lightbulbs had tripped on. Those and the lights behind the EXIT signs, which are apparently indispensable either way.

Needless to say I wasn't too happy to find out that we were without electricity on what will probably be one of the hotter days of the year. But there was nothing to do for it but wait for the guys from National Grid--who were already working on the street--to fix it. I read outside while waiting. At one point I looked up at a neighbor's window fan and saw the blades spinning, but it turned out that the wind was blowing them, then it would stop. But after some time I poked my head in and saw that it was dark. Again paradoxically, this was a good sign.