Mothership Connection

I know I talk a lot of smack about my current home of Bellingham, Washington, but imagine my surprise to find out that Bernie Worrell (of Parliament and Talking Heads fame) had a house just up the road from us in Everson (blink and you'll miss it).

It's not the worst place to retire by any means.

"more spiteful than charitable"

"Like many intelligent men, Stone took a rather suspicious attitude toward his own brain, which he saw as a precise and skilled but temperamental machine.  He was never surprised when the machine failed to perform, though he feared those moments, and hated them.  In his blackest hours, Stone doubted the utility of all thought, and all intelligence.  There were times when he envied the laboratory rats he worked with; their brains were so simple.  Certainly they did not have the intelligence to destroy themselves; that was a peculiar in invention of man.

He often argued that human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth.  It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable."

-- Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain

"you call it a massacre because that's what it was"

Vox has an excellent write-up, along with a very good and informative video, on the Tulsa White Supremacist Massacre of 1921.

"then it goes out"

"Gould said something else that was interesting on the day I turned in my first two pieces: write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.  Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right -- as right as you can, anyway -- it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.  Or criticize it.  If you're very lucky (this is my idea, not John Gould's, but I believe he would have subscribed to the notion), more will want to do the former than the latter."

-- Stephen King, On Writing

I Made A Funny

 

The larger context being, Mr. Rushdie was saying that some of his critics think he's too old to still be writing excellent fiction.

But he is my literary homeboy, and we vigorously disagree.

Bright Nights

 

Bellingham, Washington.

Eight p.m. and the sun will still be up another 30 minutes.

Of course, come fall and winter I'll be getting into bed around 4:30 p.m. to compensate.

"Don't let yesterday take up much of today"

"--I'll be sorry not so see what happens next, he said.  --I wish I could stick around a few more years.

--Yes, Loon said.

--You have to remember.  Take care of the kids.  They're the ones who matter.  You have to teach them everything I've taught you, and everything you've learned on your own.  It will only go well if we keep passing it all along.  There are no secrets, there is no mystery.  We make all that up.  In fact it's all right there in front of us.  You have to have enough food to get through the winter and spring.  That's what it all comes down to.  You have to live in a way that will gather enough food each fall to get through winter.  And you, you have to live your life, youth.  You can help Heather.  Be sure to do that.  The old witch will need it.  She's getting on herself.  She won't like it, but she'll need help.  You'll have to see that without her asking.

--I'll try.

--Good.  Listen to me now.  Bad things don't just grow on one path, they're everywhere.  So don't blame yourself when those things happen.  Don't let yesterday take up much of today.  You've always been good at that.  Just keep telling the stories around the fire.  That's what needs to be carried on."

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, Shaman

"standards to be set that are more realistic for the missions expected"

A long, in-depth, and very interesting article on how the U.S. military approaches language training, especially for elite troops who might go into areas where a base-level of language and cultural skills are a must:

"A Green Beret trained in Modern Standard Arabic and deployed to Iraq isn’t going to have many fluent conversations with his counterparts who speak an Iraqi dialect. But he can exchange simple pleasantries, ask about his counterpart’s family, and understand basic military terminology — all while getting a laugh out his new Iraqi friends who might describe his school-taught Modern Standard dialect as 'fancy Arabic.'

Once it’s accepted that in most cases the purpose of language training isn’t to achieve fluency, it allows standards to be set that are more realistic for the missions expected from today’s Green Berets. The Interagency Language Roundtable scoring scale notes that at a 1+ rating, speakers '[c]an initiate and maintain predictable face-to-face conversations and satisfy limited social demands.' Meanwhile, listeners demonstrate '[s]ufficient comprehension to understand short conversations about all survival needs and limited social demands.' This level of speaking and listening is more than enough for Green Berets to converse with a partner force that speaks the same language, get across basic ideas, and potentially work around a situation where an interpreter or English-speaking member of the partner force isn’t available."

There's a lot more going on in the article that's worth looking at.

I also appreciate an educational model where perfection isn't the goal, but basic communication is.  Maybe it's the military's version of "ELF," or "English as Lingua Franca."

One Way of Looking at FOX

Living with a very right-wing 92 year-old Dad, I get exposed to a lot of FOX News.  To paraphrase Ron Burgundy, "I'm not even mad, actually I'm impressed."

The most amazing thing about FOX isn't the cavalcade of bullshit being slung on its programming (although that deserves its own three-ring circus for sure).  The most amazing thing are the commercials.  I haven't timed them, but I swear they seem to take up more time than on CNN or MSNBC (although it's been ages since I've watched either).  It's not uncommon for my Old Man to turn on FOX, then wait five minutes, then turn it off in disgust because it's one of the those in-between blocks at the top of the hour.  (I do not have any problems with this!)

And the commercials themselves -- oh boy.

The one that is on every single break is for home re-financing.  I mean, fine.  The FOX demo skews older, and that means mostly home owners rather than renters.  Makes sense.

Then the gold and silver stuff.  What's funny to me is that the stock market remains very hot under Marxist Comrades Biden and Harris, and of course the talking heads can't bring themselves to mention this fact.  Buying gold and silver now is dumb, plain and simple.  I'm no financial genius, but even I know for long-term investing any kind of market index fund is the way to go.

Then there are the charity commercials for wounded veterans.  I obviously have no problem with these commercials themselves, but it's interesting that you've got Mark Wahlberg begging for cash for veterans to properly pay their medical bills and live in housing suited to their needs.  Apparently FOX viewers don't see the flaming contradictions inherent in this -- fight all the forever wars you want, just make sure you're prepared to go begging, hat in hand, if you happen to step on a landmine or get shot, because the U.S. military will basically abandon you.

And finally, dick stuff.  Again, the FOX demo is old as hell.  And yes, older men have dick trouble, or more specifically prostate or urination or sex issues.  Again, that's fine, it's just sad to think that when White Supremacists stormed the Capitol on January 6th to try and prevent Joe Biden from becoming the lawful president, so many of them were probably desperate for a port-o-potty.

Onward incontinent soldiers.

Yes, this is my life for now.

Sunrise, Sunset

I think I've already tooted my own horn regarding the fact that I've been getting up at six a.m. every morning since I've been back in America to make breakfast for my Dad.  (If he had his way it would be me getting up at five instead, or even four.)

The crazy thing about living out here though, at least in spring and summer, is that the sun doesn't go down until after nine p.m.  These days it rises before I get up at six a.m.

I don't mind too much, but every day is a reminder at how dark and dreary fall and winter will get here, with the sun going down around five or so.

Time -- how does that work?

"the simian slouch of your spines"

"'Watch this,' I said, holding forth the bill but really extending my arms to hold the circle, because before the attack comes there is a kind of crowding movement, an encroachment on the natural territorial rights of the body; and taking the crisp bill in my fingers I folded it once lengthwise, and once again, and then tightly twice more to the size of a postage stamp and then I did a hocus-pocus pass of the hands over each other, snapped my fingers, and then the ten-dollar bill was gone.  Oh you miserable fucking louts, that I ever needed to attach my orphan self to your wretched company, you thieves of the five-and-ten, you poking predators of your own little brothers and sisters, you dumbbells, that you could aspire to a genius life of crime, with your dead witless eyes, your slack chins, and the simian slouch of your spines -- fuck you forever, I consign you to tenement rooms and bawling infants, and sluggish wives and a slow death of incredible subjugation, I condemn you to petty crimes and mean rewards and vistas of cell block to the end of your days.  'Look!' I cried, pointing up, and they tracked my hand, expecting to see me pluck the bill out of the air, as I had so often their coins and steelies and rabbits' feet, and in the instant of their credulity, as they stared upward at nothing, I ducked under the circle and ran like hell."

-- E. L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate