"a yawning, neutral god with a relish for disinfectants"

"'It's true enough," said Crowther-Mason. 'The concept of sin seems to be dead. It's been expelled from the Garden. Freud and Marx hold up their flaming swords. But surely it's a good thing?'

'It's an atrocious thing,' said the Vicar. 'It's killed both kinds of good living. It's removed a dimension from our lives. We've all lost that incense-laden thrill we used to get from the exciting knowledge that, if you pulled up the floor-boards, you would find a deliciously bottomless pit. What have we instead? Right and wrong, with their interchangeable wardrobes, and the police-courts, temples of a yawning, neutral god with a relish for disinfectants.' With a pleasant smile he raised his brandy to his lips, as with a relish for it, as in a silent toast to sin. But he spluttered with shock, and all gasped with surprise, as the French-windows were shiveringly pushed open and Ambrose entered, nearly dead on his feet, paper-faced, trembling with terror, saying:

'Give me a drink, for God's sake.'"

-- Anthony Burgess, The Eve of Saint Venus

"time rushes by drying up or rotting"

"These memories made me think how the words 'That person has changed' are completely useless in some cases; it finally occurred to me that to expect someone to always be a certain way or consistently do a certain thing can be a huge burden on them.

When life becomes something one just lives through, when the demands of survival take up all of our time and effort, leaving no strength for any other demands, and when time rushes by drying up or rotting whatever we have had to neglect, expecting someone to carry on being the same is truly too much of a burden."

-- Baek Sae-hee, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Deokbokki

Sunbather

Princess Mandu will let you pet her now.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Chingu wishes you a great day!

"It's biological."

"'I have an idea,' I say. 'Since you're attracted to me and I'm attracted to you, why don't we go to my house and have sex and see what happens next, no strings attached?'

'That would be a betrayal of Marc.'

'You could call it that, or you could call it adding another gradation into the field of your trustworthiness.'

'Having sex with you would turn me from being trustworthy into being untrustworthy.'

'Not necessarily' I say. 'If we sleep together once and it's not incredible, you'll be more trustworthy and committed to Marc from that point on, because when you see my muscles through my T-shirt and feel attracted to me, you'll think, I've already had sex with Lincoln and it wasn't that great, so who cares about those muscles?'

'You're cloaking your lust in logic.'

'My lust is logical.'

'Lust is never logical," she says. "It's biological.'"

-- Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

Life's Rich Pageant

I'm at that advanced age when finding good kitty litter that clumps and doesn't make my house smell like chlorine is a win for the month.  Maybe year.  Anyhow, thank you Arm and Hammer and please don't raise your prices anytime soon.

Meh, I Say

I finished Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, a sequel to one of my favorite books A Visit from the Goon Squad, and I was disappointed.  It felt like short stories, which is fine except the main idea of the book is never fully explored.  There are some great moments of course (she knows how to end a novel, that's for sure) but overall I can't recommend it.

Bugonia: Wut I Thunk

This was marketed as a comedy for some reason because I guess Americans aren't as fond of films labelled "Greek Tragedy."  (Important tell: a significant plot item is named "Creon.")  Stone and Plemmons are both good on their own, but positively electric when together on the screen.  The premise of a powerful female executive who obviously must be an alien to have achieved so much works well, even when the film seems to indicate that the fantasies of the two main characters are utter crackpot nonsense.  Lanthimos goes for schtick towards the end which may keep it from ranking among his best films (The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deer) but still, this is among his better work.

Four ritually slaughtered oxen out of five!

Important Life Update

For some reason my YouTube feed is nothing but Nazi documentaries and prison cooking clips, things like five course meals made from ramen and ketchup packets.

I might be living the best life, or maybe not. Honestly not sure.

"On any given afternoon, they all converged on the nearby playhouses"

"Norton Folgate was a decidedly mixed neighborhood, though by no means as mixed as the adjacent parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, with its high crime rate and heightened susceptibility to plague. Still, it was insalubrious and crowded enough, and it undoubtedly saw its share of the dubious characters who trolled many of the streets of London. These characters in Marlowe's time had an array of colorful names:  'Anglers,' thieves who carried hooked staffs with which they could snare linen hanging from upstairs windows; 'Abraham Men,' beggars who pretended to be mad, along with 'Counterfeit Cranks,' who feigned falling sickness; 'Cony-Catchers,' con men on the lookout for easy marks; 'Priggers of Prancers,' horse thieves; 'Rufflers,' former soldiers who showed their real or pretended wounds in order to compel charity; 'Bawdy Baskets,' 'Walking Morts,' 'Kichin Morts,' and other names for women who worked the sex trade. The likes of these, together with cutpurses, pickpockets, and all the rest of London's lower depths, rubbed elbows with the street hawkers, fortune tellers, tinkers, tradesmen, maids, apprentices, porters, bailiffs, sailors, perfumed courtiers, idle gentlemen, fashionable ladies, and on occasion, as in the case of Marlowe, poets and playwrights. On any given afternoon, they all converged on the nearby playhouses, those large wooden O's that had room for all of them."

-- Stephen Greenblatt, Dark Renaissance

Cat Life

Miss Mandu is ready for winter.

Assateague Island

I finally made it to Assateague Island to see the wild horses.  The bad news: The weather was terrible, with cold, sideways rain.  The good news: While the horses were definitely not on the beach, I could hear them in the tree line.  I was able to see two of the beautiful beasts, at least.

I'll have to get back at some point for a fuller experience, but even in October it was worth the visit.

"necessary and accidental"

"Taking possession of this new abode, I put on my thinking cap.  I reasoned more or less as follows: Civilization is a thing both necessary and accidental; like the lining of a nest, it is a shelter from the world, a tiny counterworld that the large world silently tolerates, with the toleration of indifference, because in it there is no answer to the questions of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, laws and customs. Language, the creation of civilization, is like the framework of the nest; it binds all the bits of lining and units them into the shape that is deemed necessary by the occupants of the nest. Language is an appeal to the joint identity of the nesting beings, their common denominator, their constant of similarity and therefore its influence must end immediately beyond the edge of that subtle structure."

-- Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice

Happy Third Birthdays!

Happy third birthday to Chingu (male tux) and Mandu (female cream with spots).  Actually, we'll never know exactly when they were born since they're both rescues.  Mandu, the smaller one, is actually about five days older than Chingu.  Anyhow, much stinky Churu paste was consumed.

These guys are the best!

"I know that office, they issue passports to anybody."

"The cat then stirred, jumped off the chair, stood on his hind legs, front legs akimbo, opened his maw and said:

'Well, so I sent the telegram. What of it?'

Maximilian Andreevich's head at once began to spin, his arms and legs went numb, he dropped the suitcase and sat down on a chair facing the cat.

'I believe I asked in good Russian?' the cat said sternly. 'What of it?'

But Poplavsky made no reply.

'Passport!' barked the cat, holding out a plump paw.

Understanding nothing and seeing nothing except the two sparks burning in the cat's eyes, Poplavsky snatched the passport from his pocket like a dagger. The cat picked up a pair of glasses in thick black frames from the pier-glass table, put them on his muzzle, thus acquiring a still more imposing air, and took the passport from Poplavsky's twitching hand.

'I wonder, am I going to faint or not?...' thought Poplavsky.

From far away came Koroviev's snivelling, the whole front hall filled with the smell of ether, valerian and some other nauseating vileness.

'What office issued this document?' the cat asked, peering at the page. No answer came.

'The 412th,' the cat said to himself, tracing with his paw on the passport, which he was holding upside down. 'Ah, yes, of course! I know that office, they issue passports to anybody. Whereas I, for instance, wouldn't issue one to the likes of you! Not on your life I wouldn't! I'd just take one look at your face and instantly refuse!' The cat got so angry that he flung the passport on the floor. 'Your presence at the funeral is cancelled, the cat continued in an official voice. 'Kindly return to your place of residence.' And he barked through the door: 'Azazello!'

At his call a small man ran out to the front hall, limping, sheathed in black tights, with a knife tucked into his leather belt, red-haired, with a yellow fang and with albugo in his left eye.

Poplavsky felt he could not get enough air, rose from his seat and backed away, clutching his heart.

'See him off, Azazello!' the cat ordered and left the hall.

'Poplavsky,' the other twanged softly, 'I hope everything's understood now?'

Poplavsky nodded."

-- Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

One Battle After Another: Wut I Thunk

Paul Thomas Anderson channels his inner Tarantino (ultraviolence, edgy racial humor) and makes a shlubby Leonard DiCaprio his anti-hero for the ages.  There's some real humor as well.  The ICE scenes are intense, but also strangely ineffective -- if freedom is only a phone call to Benicio del Toro's dojo away, what's to worry about in the long run?  Sean Penn chews lots of scenery as the bad guy, and this might be a deal-breaker for some.

Overall, very classy with a few misses.

Four revolutionary joints out of five!

Is It Fall Yet?

My nephew rode brilliantly this weekend in the warm weather.  Nice way to celebrate the end of summer!

The Long Walk: Wut I Thunk

When it doesn't seem like it should work, it manages to.  When it has moments that might be capitalized on to go from good to great, it doesn't quite manage.

Mark Hamill isn't given much material to work with, so he grunts a lot.  The violence is predictably graphic, but the script also manages to bring some warmth and humor at times.

It's ultimately a movie about relationships, as strange as that might sound in such a twisted world.

Peter, the second lead, has an accent that swerves crazily between rural Alabama and Cockney London.  It's truly distracting.

The ending is safe and predictable and goes against a major sacrifice by the main character.  If only it had ended about one minute sooner it would have been something special.

Three sets of post-apocalyptic insoles out of five!

"bigger and bigger machines"

"'Strategic considerations dictate the construction of bigger and bigger machines, and, whether we like it or not, this inevitably means an increase in the amount of information stored in the brains. This in turn means that the brain will steadily increase its control over all of society's collective processes. The brain will decide where to locate the infamous button. Or whether to change the style of infantry uniforms. Or whether to increase production of a certain kind of steel, demanding appropriations to carry out its purposes. Once you create this kind of brain you have to listen to it. If a Parliament wastes time debating whether or not to grant the appropriations it demands, the other side may gain a lead, so after a while the abolition of parliamentary decisions becomes unavoidable. Human control over the brain's decisions will decrease in proportion to the increase in its accumulated knowledge. Am I making myself clear? There will be two growing brains, one on each side of the ocean. What do you think a brain like this will demand first when it's ready to take the next step in the perpetual race?'"

-- Stanislaw Lem, The Investigation

"only statues"

"Suddenly, after I finished a poem, he said, 'Esther, have you ever seen a man?'

The way he said it I knew he didn't mean a regular man or a man in general. I knew he meant a man naked

'No,' I said. 'Only statues.'

'Well, don't you think you would like to see me?'

I didn't know what to say. My mother and my grandmother had started hinting around to me a lot lately about what a fine, clean boy Buddy Willard was, coming from such a fine, clean family, and how everybody at church thought he was a model person, so kind to his parents and to older people, as well as so athletic and so handsome and so intelligent.

All I'd heard about, really, was how fine and clean Buddy was and how he was the kind of person a girl should stay fine and clean for. So I didn't really see the harm in anything Buddy would think up to do.

'Well, all right, I guess so,' I said.

I stared at Buddy while he unzipped his chino pants and took them off and laid them on a chair and then took off his underpants that were made of something like nylon fishnet.

'They're cool,' he explained, 'and my mother says they wash easily.'

Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed."

-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Crabs, Hon

A crab feast with my sister, brother in law, and nephew.  Not cheap, but very delicious.  A nice way to end the summer.

Frederick, Late Summer

Frederick, Maryland.

Summer was a mixed bag.  Bring on fall!

"a din like silversmiths"

Blackberrying

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,   

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.   

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,   

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me   

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock   

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space   

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths   

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

-- Sylvia Plath

My Two Cents

With everything going on politically with and within Ukraine the basic calculus is the same: Putin won't give up, and Ukraine would be stupid to take a deal that just means Russia waits a year to rearm and invades again.

It is good to see the UK and EU stepping up, but hopefully they realize it's fight in Ukraine or fight in ten years in Poland and the Baltics.

Kitty TV

 

Chingu and Mandu are fascinated by the newly born bunnies in the backyard.

Fantastic Four: First Steps, Wut I Thunk

I'm a sucker for retro-futurism, and that's probably the best thing about this film.  No spandex, just wool!  Performances are fine except for the huge bad guy Galactus, who literally says almost nothing other than he's hungry for planets.  Johnny Storm is kind of the dumb lady's man, but a twist in the plot gives him a little more credit for having some brains.

The real question is, in 2025 are superhero movies still something worth watching?  I'd say this is an above average Marvel product, although just that.  The Silver Surfer never really looks right -- too much CGI or too little I don't know.  Natasha Lyonne is criminally underused, as is her relationship with The Thing.

Three Clobberin' Times out of five!

Bark At The Moon

R.I.P. Ozzy Osbourne.

I guess it makes sense that as a 90s kid I was too busy listening to Pavement and Nirvana to really give Heavy Metal the respect it deserves until I was older.  His antics and drug use covered over some incredible talent.

"historic events in themselves"

"It hurt him to talk about it, she felt, but she guessed he didn't know how much, or how. She could tell he didn't unpack this, much, or maybe ever. He said that people like Ash made their whole lives about it. Dressed in black and marked themselves, but for them it was more about other species, the other great dying, than the 80 percent.

No comets crashing, nothing you could really call a nuclear war. Just everything else, tangled in the changing climate: droughts, shortages, crop failures, honeybees gone like they almost were now, collapse of other keystone species, every last alpha predator gone, anti-biotics doing even less than they already did, diseases that were never big pandemic but big enough to be historic events in themselves. And all of it around people: how people were, how many of them there were, how they'd changed things just by being there.

The shadows on the lawn were black holes, bottomless, or like velvet had been spread, perfectly flat."

-- William Gibson, The Peripheral

Play Ball

 

Nymeo Field, home of the Frederick Keys.

I got a free ticket to attend a Summer League ball game here in Frederick.  It's college level ball basically, but the beer and food prices are all very much major league.  Not a bad little stadium but the bathrooms were also a nightmare.

If you're sensing a negative trend on this here blog that's because there is one, between a job that started strong and has turned into a typically toxic management situation and, well, everything else going on in the world.

I turn 51 this month.  I'm considering early retirement.

I kind of wish I was joking?

Back From The Beach

Corolla Beach was fantastic.  I walked and swam every day.

Meanwhile, work has been a bit disappointing.  It turns out I was not being paid my full share since I started at the new place back in January.  That, and a toxic supervisor mean I'm looking for something else but planning on staying on in the meantime.

I guess there's no perfect job but finding something where I'm treated with a modicum of dignity would be nice.  Although I did get a small pay raise.

OBX

 

Corolla, North Carolina.

Summertime

I'm off to the beach for a few days.  Blogging will not be happening but I'll hopefully come back with some good pictures.

Poor Kitties

If you like fireworks, why not go see the big shows? Why turn my neighborhood into a warzone?

Yes, I am old.

"stand and perform the thousands of little gestures which constitute life on Earth"

"What did that word mean to me? Earth? I thought of the great bustling cities where I would wander and lose myself, and I thought of them as I had thought of the ocean on the second or third night, when I had wanted to throw myself upon the dark waves. I shall immerse myself among men. I shall be silent and attentive, an appreciative companion. There will be many acquaintances, friends, women -- and perhaps even a wife. For a while, I shall have to make a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand and perform the thousands of little gestures which constitute life on Earth, and then those gestures will become reflexes again. I shall find new interests and occupations; and I shall not give myself completely to them, as I shall never again give myself completely to anything or anybody. Perhaps at night I shall stare up at the dark nebula that cuts off the light of the twin suns, and remember everything, even what I am thinking now. With a condescending, slightly rueful smile I shall remember my follies and my hopes. And this future Kelvin will be no less worthy a man than the Kelvin of the past, who was prepared for anything in the name of an ambitious enterprise called Contact. Nor will any man have the right to judge me."

-- Stanislaw Lem, Solaris

"The rose petals / Presenting a truth of a different order"

Stereolab, "Flashes From Everywhere"

What does a band owe us after making incredible music for over 30 years?  The new Stereolab album is really pleasant, and tighter than the last few albums in terms of songcraft.  Are any big chances taken?  Not really!  But it's pretty lovely in its own right.

So It Begins

Two Democratic state legislators were shot in Minnesota, one fatally and one critically.

Cue the New York Times telling us both sides are responsible.

Double Loss

We lost Sly Stone and Brian Wilson in the same week, two musical geniuses who brought a lot to American pop music.

Me And My EV

I'm loving my new Kona EV.  Predictably, since my work commute is less than ten miles, it's perfect for my needs.  Eventually I need to upgrade to a Level Two charger but I'm making my way just fine with a Level One.  I find that on the weekend I can get extra charge into it to carry me through the week with no problems.

Again, maybe not for everybody depending on distance needs, but I love the thing.  Beautiful smooth, quiet ride as well.

Slava Ukraini

Ukraine destroyed a significant number of Russian bombers with drones and the equivalent of rented U-hauls.

There are a lot of things to be upset about right now as an American, but the fact we aren't giving full support to Ukraine as they fight Russian occupation is up towards the top for me.

Lazy Sunday

 

As they approach three years old each, Chingu and Mandu don't sleep together like they used too.  They'll groom each other once in a while, but it's more rare to see pictures of them together.

Their personalities are bright, of course -- Mandu in front is just chilling.  Chingu in back is plotting his next act of civil disobedience.

I'm Hooked!

Wonderbooks of course, #Frederick #Maryland.

Warfare -- Wut I Thunk of It

I'm worried about Alex Garland.  After creating some of my favorite movies of all time (28 Days Later, Ex Machina, Annihilation, hell, I'll say it -- Men) he seems to have gone into some weird military fascination phase.  Civil War was a very terrible film that attempted to drain politics from an inherently political topic.  Now, with Warfare, we go micro instead of macro and see a highly forensic examination of a single battle during the U.S. occupation of Ramadi in Iraq.  Are my words too biased?  Because a squad of U.S. troops literally goes into an Iraqi home to take it over for a few hours to gather intelligence.  (The civilians are kept in a bedroom, including children.)

It almost works as an attempt at a "neutral" examination of combat -- the stress, the suffering, the unknown.

Garland blows this all up (ahem) in the credits, where the actual soldiers involved are brought in for cheery, jock-y, fist-bump-y photos.  This actually happened, man!

A lone Iraqi woman, the mother of the children who had been taken hostage, gets to say "Why?  Why?" but doesn't really get to speak, because she's the enemy of course, just one who got really lucky.  An expendable NPC in the true world of American military exceptionalism.

Hard to believe, but this is worse than Civil War.  Is this some kind of mid-life crisis for Garland?

"the relationship between letterforms and the other things that humans make and do"

"But letterforms are not only objects of science.  They also belong to the realm of art, and they participate in its history.  They have changed over time just as music, painting and architecture have changed, and the same historical terms -- Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Romantic, and so on -- are useful in each of these fields.

This approach to the classification of letterforms has another important advantage.  Typography never occurs in isolation.  Good typography demands not only a knowledge of type itself, but an understanding of the relationship between letterforms and the other things that humans make and do.  Typographical history is just that: the study of the relationships between type designs and the rest of human activity -- politics, philosophy, the arts, and the history of ideas.  It is a lifelong pursuit, but one that is informative and rewarding from the beginning."

-- Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style

Nothing Is Easy When It Comes to Eldercare

This highly depressing article about a father dying in an expensive nursing home is necessary, and difficult, to read in full:

"This indifferent care belied the promises of the establishment’s website, which portrayed a warm and engaging environment where caregivers chatted with residents and offered companionship and comfort: 'Your care team is always on hand to help – as little or as much as you need.'”

Instead, Cindy had to visit for hours every day to help Dad, trying to prod administrators and overworked staff to give him more of the promised care for which we were paying dearly, but without making so much fuss that they’d evict him. She was stressed, and we were all heartbroken that aside from family visits, Dad was spending his last days lonely, helpless and bored, at the mercy of a company that seemed to be doing more warehousing than care."

There's nothing easy about taking care of an elderly loved one.  Throw dementia into the mix, and you're eternally dealing with options ranging from bad to not-quite-as-bad.

We eventually moved my dad out of a nursing home and into a house with me.  We had private nurses coming in during the day, but then the issue was helping him in the middle of the night.  His internal clock regarding day and night was just gone.

I thought I'd have more to say about the whole experience but just documenting different stories like this one seems like the best path forward.

To reiterate, our family had resources in no small part due to my dad having worked (very hard!) for the Federal Government for over 30 years.  It was still a bruising experience for all of us before he passed at 93.

Spring Sprang Sprung

Things are good.  Spring is here, and I've spent the day working on the (very small) yard.  My two cats are healthy and shedding like crazy.  The new job is really going well, and I might have an update on that later this spring.  And hey, I just bought my first electric car -- a Hyundai Kona.  I'm loving it so far.

Longer term, I'll be going to the Outer Banks with my sister and her family in July.  It's been a while since I've had a real beach-y vacation, so I'm stoked.

Eternal Recurrence

I've said it before -- Orioles ain't got no pitching.

"He too was torn apart by screaming girls."

"'Let's talk about mythology, Lobey.  Or let's you listen.  We've had quite a time assuming the rationale of the world.  The irrational presents just as much of a problem.  You remember the legend of the Beatles?  You remember the Beatle Ringo left his Maureen love even though she treated him tender.  He was the one Beatle who did not sing, so the earliest forms of the legend go.  After a hard day's night he and the rest of the Beatles were torn apart by screaming girls, and he and the other Beatles returned, finally at one, with the great rock and the great roll.'  I put my head in La Dire's lap.  She went on.  'Well, that myth is a version of a much older story that is not so well known.  There are no 45's or 33's from the time of this older story.  There are only a few written versions, and reading is rapidly losing its interest for the young.  In the older story Ringo was called Orpheus.  He too was torn apart by screaming girls.  But the details are different.  He lost his love -- in this version Eurydice -- and she went straight to the great rock and the great roll, where Orpheus had to go to get her back.  He went singing, for in this version Orpheus was the greatest singer, instead of the silent one.  In myths things always turn into their opposites as one version supersedes the next.'"

 -- Samuel Delany, The Einstein Intersection

Spring, Finally

Spring took its time but finally got here.

In The Jungle...

Mandu the huntress decided she needed a nap.

"disintegrate in the sun's mist"

"The old man is still.  On his old thatch hat with its round crown there is a stain where in earlier days he had worn some sort of band, but the collar of his khaki shirt is clean.  In the low sun of late afternoon, the silver hair over his ears dissolves in filaments of light against the sparkle of the water, and the ear lobes seem illumined from within, as if his skin had gone transparent.

From the companionway behind comes the faint sweet smell of manure.  The green turtles lie belly up, each with a neat turd pile by its tail.  One breathes its hollow gasp, and Buddy sinks beside it, on his knees.

    You watchin us?  Dat what Athens say.  He say dat you watchin us die.

The turtle watches him, unblinking.

Dark noddies cross the swift colors of the coral bank, toward the cays.  The cays astern disintegrate in the sun's mist."

-- Peter Matthiessen, Far Tortuga

"Dreamin' is Free"

RIP to Blondie drummer Clem Burke, an underrated drummer in a very underrated band.

Mickey 17 -- What I Thunk

Hey, it shares a major plot point with Keanu Reeves' and China Mieville's The Book of Elsewhere!  What if you could live forever?  Scratch that, what if you could die forever, as in over and over and over again?

The first half of Bong Joon-Ho's film is pretty great.  When the titular Mickey finally meets a copy of himself, things fall apart.

Robert Pattinson is good but never does seem to get his working class American accent consistent.  New characters show up out of the blue.  Mark Ruffalo as the villainous president is actually not that great.  I'm willing to be a nickel that Bong told him to "do his best Trump," and it's not a very good Trump.  The animal rights stuff isn't unwelcome, but not really integrated the way it should be either.

The ending does manage to tie the important stuff together in spite of the sloppy second half.  I liked it.  I could have waited to watch on DVD too, nothing lost.

The Book of Elsewhere by China Mieville and Keanu Reeves (Minor Spoilers)

 

I was honestly a bit trepidatious going into this one.  Mieville is one of my favorite science fiction writers, scratch that, favorite writers.  Keanu is -- one of my favorite people, not necessarily one of my favorite actors?

And right off the bat I was looking to figure out which passages where written by which dude.  There are a lot of interesting, if not great, moments, and the use of certain high-falutin' language makes me think they are Mieville's, but who knows.  A collaborative project can bring things out of you you never expected, so maybe I should give Reeves more credit.

But at the end of the day, we have a pretty good, not great, "chosen one" story (which screams Reeves) met with some philosophical ruminations as to the implications (spoiler!) of immortality, or rather quite cleverly, "infinite mortalities."

If you're really desperate to read something new by Mieville, you could do worse.  But it's never going to rank among his best work -- Perdido Street Station, The City and the City, Embassytown.  The overall focus just isn't there.

Still, I liked it just fine.  Thank you, Ted.

"The ghosts of everything"

"'What I have found,' he said, 'is that most journeys take you back to where you left from.  But not all.  A very long time ago I learned that at the end of some journeys, you start again somewhere new.  They don't happen very often.  Such journeys as those.  So when they do it's worth taking note.'  He gestured at the book.  'In any case recalling has never been a difficulty.  But there are ways of seeing.  See too many and it's overwhelming.  If you're looking for patterns, there is a line between too little information and too much.  So this is data.'

'And this,' I said, holding it up, 'is enough?  The perfect amount of information?'

'No,' he said.  'Not nearly enough.  It might be enough in a long time.  And when I write in it, as when anyone writes in any book, what I record is accompanied by the infinite ghosts of that which is not recorded.'

'The ghosts of everything,' I said."

-- China Mieville and Keanu Reeves, The Book of Elsewhere

Sad Sad News

It looks like Gene Hackman spent a week wandering around his house after his wife died.  Then he also died.

Me and my sister know all too much about this dementia stuff.  If you have an elderly relative, please check in daily!

Downtown Frederick, Not Quite Spring

 

Frederick, Maryland.

Only You

 

Gambrill State Park, west of Frederick, Maryland.  Lots of nice hiking trails yet to be discovered.

"It's a big black sky over my town"

 

Robyn and David Byrne, "Dancing On My Own"

A musical bright spot in an otherwise dismal 2025. 

"I wanna ride on the Ferris wheel"

Kim Deal, "Disobedience"

I'm really enjoying the new Kim Deal solo album.  More Breeders than Pixies, with some nice curveballs thrown in (Latin horns, anyone?)

Now it's Kelly's turn?

Feel The Spirit

 

Browsed at the always amazing Wonderbooks in Frederick, Maryland.

Blue Apple

Frederick, Maryland.

Job Stuff

I started a new job last week and it's going really well.  After 12 years teaching ESL in South Korea, and various other things along the way (substituting, tutoring, composition teaching in graduate school) I think part of me will always think of myself as a teacher, or an ex-teacher.

I'm also certain that thousands of years ago, sitting around the in-cave fire, the cave-people elders were complaining about the young folks.  But something really does seem to have changed -- so much unnecessary drama, the occasional death threat from a second grader, the addiction to cell phones -- in terms of what a teacher's job is supposed to be now.

I'll say more soon but it's nice to go into work and not have to hear any screaming, or any n- or f-bombs.

"one way out of an unhappy marriage in cultures where divorce was unavailable to wives"

I didn't realize that in a former life the great sci-fi novelist Charless Stross was a pharmacist, ahem, aher, a chemist since he's British.  And he took the time to write a really nifty piece on literary poisoning:

"Poisoning somebody is a violent assault, but a stealthy one: unlike shooting, stabbing, or punching it may not be obvious who's responsible, or even that an attack has taken place until much later. Historically it's often been a tool used by the weak against the overbearingly strong: one way out of an unhappy marriage in cultures where divorce was unavailable to wives. But, despite being stealthy, poisoning is also risky. Many legal systems punish poisoners more harshly than other murderers, either because it's the preferred tool of the oppressed against their privileged oppressor, or because it levels the playing field of violence between the weak and the well-armed and the latter don't like the taste of their own medicine.

So, before using poison in fiction, you need to be very clear about the motivation and expectancy of survival of the poisoner."

Absolutely do read the whole thing. 

Ichiro!

Ichiro Suzuki makes it to the hall of fame on his first ballot.

Like the recently departed Rickey Henderson, you could watch any game of any importance and they elevated the skill, the passion, and the joy.

"social techniques to match the situation"

"A firework he called it -- well, that was accurate enough.  It was a virtuoso display of paradoxes: opposing arguments brilliantly set forth so that one could hardly question the logic on either side.  He presented, among other things, a picture of the free democratic state as the high point of the social evolution of man; then, with shattering precision, he proceeded to demonstrate that the free democratic state was far too unstable to endure and therefore guaranteed its citizens misery and destruction.  He presented totalitarian systems as stable, enduring, reliable -- and then mercilessly exposed one by one the factors which rendered their eventual downfall inevitable.  By the time the reader was dizzy, Mayor was tossing out provocative suggestions for remedying these defects, and the total impression left on students like myself -- who went through college faced with what seemed like equally appalling alternative futures: nuclear war or a population explosion that would pass the six billion mark by the end of the century -- was that for the first time the West had produced a man capable of forging social techniques to match the situation."

-- John Brunner, The Squares of the City

Fur Puddle

 

In my deeply held scientific opinion, Chingu is a very good boy except when he's being a very bad boy.

Play 'The Candy Colored Clown!'

David Lynch has died, and the world is less strange and colorful now.

Blue Velvet is a stone cold classic.  Inland Empire may be my favorite film of his, but I can't watch it again because it left me shaken and spooked for about a week after I saw it.  And his Dune is certainly better than how it was critically reviewed on release.

Not a shabby musician either.

Rest Well, Jimmy

 

My sister and I braved the cold to pay our respects to President Carter.  May we all have second acts in life that involved serving others.

A Complete Unknown -- What I Thunk

The film makes some bold choices -- Alan Lomax and Peter Seeger as villains, or at least antagonists.  Joan Baez doesn't come off that well either.  But focusing on the early career of Dylan, these choices make sense by the end.

I also like how smart the film is musically.  There's a minor but great scene that explains to non-guitar players what playing in an open tuning means.

Like all biopics, the film lives or dies on whether you believe in Chalamet's depiction -- I did!

Basically, I thought it was great but I can see where others might differ.