8/30/07
Worry
For a few weeks now, the cat has looked a little thin to my eye. He was always slender, but monotonously healthy, and he's probably about 13—they estimated that he was 5, when I got him at the shelter in early 2000. So I wondered if it was just that he was getting older, the poor feller, and then yesterday it seemed he was hardly eating. The food in his bowl was untouched in the morning, and dark thoughts moved in like storm clouds. He's off to the vet soon, of course. But he was acting perfectly happy, no evident pain or distress or anything, just not eating much. I brooded about it all day, and when I visited some friends before going home last night I mentioned it, and they gave me a can of fish to try.
I got home, and again, the food was barely touched. My heart sank. He was still bright and happy, and I was on the verge of staying home from work the next morning and taking him straight in to the vet's before the scheduled appointment, when I got an idea. I scooped some of his food from the bowl—he's eaten dry food happily since the day I got him—and brought it to him where he was sitting by the window. I put one piece down in front of him, and he happily gobbled it up. I put another. He ate that avidly too. Another, another, on and on, pretty much a good bit of what he'd normally eat. And a ray of hopeful sunshine broke through those clouds. He's got an appetite after all, it seems. We'll go to the vet and see what's what, but I thought to myself that I'd happily sit for an hour every day and dole out little bits of food for him, if that's what it took. That's the least of what I'd do, I thought, as I watched him eat. He's an extraordinarily gentle and affectionate creature, and every day that he's healthy and happy is a little—no, actually a fairly good-sized—gift from whatever gods may be. I hadn't ever forgotten that, but it's coming home to me strongly today.
That said, it's best to be careful when you're worried about a cat's appetite. Give a man a fish, the adage says, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. I'd add that if you give a cat a fish, you give it fish for a lifetime, if the cat has anything to day about it. My current cat is very undemanding, but the former one was strong-willed and wanted her way at all times. Once while I was away, she went on a hunger strike and the catsitter gave her tuna. Well, that cat continued to insist on having tuna when I got back, not the specially prepared dry food I bought from the vet. We had a battle of wills for weeks over that. It was like negotiating with the Soviets: You had to bring some strength of will to the table, because she was one tough cookie and if you gave an inch she'd roll right over you. To my mind, giving cats fish to eat is like shooting a person—you really should try to go through all your other options first.
I'm thinking of creating a list, off to the side, of blogs and sites I like for whatever reason, but at least for today I'd like you to check out my friend T.'s new blog, From the Mountain. She cares about things, and she's wryly funny, and an excellent writer. And editor. And human being generally. And she's done a dandy book on the funny little museums in Pennsylvania, called The Best Places You've Never Seen: Pennsylvania's Small Museums, A Traveler's Guide. Needless to say, I'm poisonously envious.
8/29/07
A Day in the Park
Yesterday I took part in the annual summer ritual, the office picnic. Among the other traditional games was the sack race, which I'd somehow managed to avoid until now. I realized, as I got into my sack, that there were some fine points to consider. Hold the bag taut, or let it loose? Stand tall, or crouch? And since this Larry Craig fellow brought up the subject, should you keep your feet close together, or adopt a wide stance? In this particular situation, and in no other, I thought the wider stance might actually be preferable. I can report that I did OK in the sack race, but not as well as this one guy, who leaped so high and reached out so far with his legs that he made me think a) of a kangaroo and b) of a giant sack-racing inchworm. I've never seen anything like it. We talked and played games and ate food. It was a good afternoon.
I was touched by a quotation I saw from the famous Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. If you're worried that you haven't yet achieved total mastery of your art or craft or whatever, you can take comfort (as I do) from the fact that Hokusai first became known in his sixties, and didn't really feel like he had it going on even as time went on. He always wanted to get better:
"From around the age of six," he said, "I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie."Wikipedia, which this is from, goes on to say that he declared on his deathbed, "If I had another five years, even, I could have become a real painter." I wish he could have had the five years, and it would have been something to see what would have happened if he'd lived to 140 or more, but he certainly did things worthy of attention in the time he was granted and it shows one simple truth: You've got to keep at it.
Sometimes you read the news, and you simply don't know what to say. And at other times, you simply do, if you're familiar with the famous words of Mandy Rice-Davies. Ms. Rice-Davies was involved in the Profumo affair, in which people professed to be shocked that older, powerful rich men had slept with young, attractive women not their wives. Sex scandals have come a long way since those days, certainly. But at any rate, Ms. Rice-Davies was one of the non-wives. As Wikipedia says, "When the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied having an affair or having even met her, she replied, 'Well, he would, wouldn't he?'"
Once you know that story, you know what to say when anyone denies anything. Like this morning, I read that NASA has reviewed the evidence in the matter of the allegedly drunken astronauts, and they say they found no evidence that astronauts flew missions drunk. But they would say that, wouldn't they?
8/27/07
In a Walk
Some work people went to a charity 5K run/walk to benefit research into leukemia and lymphoma yesterday, and I went along. I've never been a runner, although I do work out regularly. Running never seemed like fun, is the thing. The runners would talk about the runner's high but they didn't look high, or anything; they usually looked miserable to me and I decided to exercise in other ways. But yesterday I was in the thick of the subculture. They were all stretching and bouncing; they're full of energy, runners. They have special equipment and iPods strapped to them, and they all grouped themselves at the head of the pack and took off. My work gang was right at the end, because we meant to walk the distance. And we literally never saw anybody run; we were at the back, and we jolly well stayed there. But we made the 3.1 miles (5K in English terms) in under an hour, which is a respectable walking pace. You pay your charity money up front, and you don't help the sick people by going any faster, so we didn't.
I basically don't have broadcast TV, because my reception is terrible and I won't pay for cable, so I've started ordering episodes of King of the Hill so that I can get some fly tying done. I'll explain: Fly tying is something that requires all your visual attention, but it's not exactly entertaining, so I used to schedule it when there was some sitcom on that didn't require me to actually look at it. KOTH isn't a visual cornucopia or anything, compared to The Simpsons, say. It's written incredibly well, and voice-acted perfectly, and the visuals don't exactly detract, or anything, but if you need to get some fly tying done it'll pass the time and you won't be looking up all the time. To me this is like the slaves with their field hollers, where you're working away and someone else's job is to entertain you because the work is pretty boring. Or it's like when the drill sergeant sings those "I don't know but I've been told" songs. Fly tying isn't quite as demanding as being a soldier or a slave, but you get the idea. Maybe offices should have that sort of thing? "I don't know but I been told/that TPS report in your in-box is gettin' pretty old! Sound off! One two!..." and so forth.
Life's little coincidences—I've been hearing cicadas sing all over the place lately, so I got to reading about their vocal habits and it seemed they don't just sing for mates (that's what you hear emanating from the trees on summer afternoons), they have a distress call too. So yesterday I'm walking out to get a salad and I hear a loud rattling sound coming from midair. I look, and a cicada is zooming in wide circles, with a large dragonfly hot on its tail. Dragonflies are extremely fierce predators, and I don't know if I was hearing a distress call or not, but if the cicada was in mortal danger and if it were distressed you could hardly blame it.
8/26/07
Requiem for Ed
Just like when I first saw it in the theater back in '94, when I saw the film Ed Wood on DVD this weekend I had a strange sense of pity and affection for the guy, and a sense that none of us are so different, really. Not that different, even if he was a cross-dressing sub-B picture moviemaker who hung around pretty exclusively with some of the oddest misfits you could find. The thing is that the film showed him not so much as a laughable failure, even if he created Plan Nine from Outer Space, regularly listed as the worst film ever made. Ed Wood was made by people who weren't failures at all—they were unimpeachably talented and cool people working at the top of their game, and they had every right to look down on the less accomplished, but they didn't. What I took away from Ed Wood was its emphasis on his capacity for wonder and belief in film generally. He could look past egregious ineptitude—admittedly, his own—and see the film as he'd imagined it himself: a thrilling tale and soaring work of imagination. The biopic seems to be honest and factual, as much as these things are, and it helps that he doesn't seem to have meant much harm, that he was a pretty decent human being. His biggest problem was his own capacity for self-delusion, his overreliance on the audience's suspension of disbelief. He was correct, of course, in thinking audiences have to suspend their disbelief at some level when they're following a story, whether it's Jack in the Beanstalk or Citizen Kane. There's no such thing as magic beans, as far as anyone knows, and the people in movies aren't real—they're much too big, to begin with. So we're always torn between believing and not believing, and good storytellers make sure to use all their skill to help us believe. Wood just wasn't good enough at that—he wasn't clear enough about the standards you had to maintain, and didn't know where the bottom line was.
But he was able to look past the monstrous flaws in his work, to see triumph around the corner, to see the audience get carried away as much as he did by the flow of the story, by the good intentions of the crude special effects, worse-than-mediocre writing, and gaping plot holes in the films. And here's the thing: We all do that, just a little. If you want to function as a person, don't you cut yourself a little slack, forgive your flaws and mistakes, laugh it off, say you can't win 'em all, pobody's nerfect? Of course you do. You strive to be good, or ought to, but by definition, we can't all be excellent. We all ask to be forgiven, our work compensated and our selves loved, even if neither is perfect. So we're all a little like Ed, really. I've never seen Plan Nine from Outer Space, but I'd like to some day. And I'll probably laugh at it, but part of me will know that the poor guy was trying, he really was. He was getting a kick out of what he was doing, and wanted people to like it. So it'll be that gentle, rueful, healthy kind of laughter, mostly, the kind you get when you're really laughing, with loving forgiveness, at yourself.
P.S. Of course we all, again like Ed, have to work under various handicaps. He tried unsuccessfully to rise above that, but there was a guy who really did show that you could do at least creditable work on straitened means using resourcefulness and ingenuity. If you want a saint to pray to when you need those qualities working for you to get the job done, you should invoke the name of Roger Corman.
8/24/07
Reviews
I have been remiss; my apologies. I should have said before that the Bedinabox mattress is just fine. I've had numerous hits on that word, which shows that there's people out there who are intrigued by the idea of buying a mattress online and having it delivered to their house by UPS, no muss, no fuss, no house arrest while you wait for the delivery truck. They're intrigued, naturally, but a little nervous too, because you're buying a mattress, after all, and that's sort of like getting married. If you don't like it after you make the commitment, well, there you are, aren't you? The mattress arrives compressed—that's the "in a box" part—but once decompressed it's your responsibility and expense to send it back if you don't like it. This gives people pause, naturally, so they start googling. I did too, I googled "Bedinabox reviews" and I googled "Bedinabox complaints" and on and on, and I found damn few reviews or complaints or anything; clearly these things are just beginning to trickle out there. One guy said he was interested and then happened to travel for other reasons to Tennessee, so he went to Johnson City, where these things are made, and laid down on one and liked it.
The rest of us have to take our chances, but at any rate, with no further ado, it's a pretty good mattress. The Tempur-Pedic is firmer, and hideously more expensive into the bargain, but I'm not sure "firm" means much with a memory-foam mattress. The layer of memory foam in the Bedinabox is less dense, and feels a bit poofier, but you lie down and you're supported more or less evenly. It's not so much like you're lying on something, really; it's more like your various parts are suspended at whatever level they'd naturally find. You sink into it, and that's a new sensation if you're used to traditional mattresses, but if you're reasonably adaptable it feels great. My back is happy, and that's the key thing. I haven't even put the down cover thingy on yet, but will soon. I wanted to know how it was basically, and I'll say again, this is a reasonable mattress and it comes in the damn mail. If you value convenience, and more to the point, if you value money, it's a pretty reasonable option.
I can't think about mattresses too much without remembering the play The Man Who Came to Dinner. It's about a group of entertainment types hanging out in house in the 1930s. One is a libidinous actress named Lorraine Sheldon, another is a character named Banjo based on Harpo Marx, and when he sees Lorraine, Banjo greets her thusly:
BANJO: Why, hello, Sweetie Pants. How are you?
LORRAINE: (Not over-cordial.) Very well, thank you. And you, Banjo?
BANJO: I'm fine, fine. How's the mattress business, Lorraine?
LORRAINE: Very funny. It's too bad, Banjo, that your pictures aren't as funny as you seem to think you are.
8/22/07
Unintended Irony (Again)
I'm looking at this brochure that came in the mail, and in the back it's got tips on helping the planet. "Lose the phone book," it says. They make up almost 10 percent of landfills! Did you know that? It also says to share your popcorn—if half the moviegoers did that, we could save the packaging for more than 2.5 billion quart-size servings. Gosh! Who sent this, you ask? Lemme check—ah. It's Chevrolet. Thanks, Chevrolet! Let's see, what else: "Forget the receipt." If everyone in the United States didn't take an ATM receipt, the roll of saved paper could circle the equator 15 times. Wouldn't that be cool? Christo, are you reading this? Hint hint! Hey, what else? "Stay home," it says! Good idea! What else? Hey, here's one: "Stop junk mail!" Just go to www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist. I'll do it today! And there's, more, let's see...
8/21/07
I Mean, Reely
Another busy week, sorry, and the day started with a brusque e-mail from some clown at a metro newspaper who wanted more information about a press release I sent for a client. You have to be nice to these people, but it does recall a Peanuts cartoon I remember from decades ago—Snoopy wants to come in out of the rain, and Charlie Brown tells him he's sorry but his mother doesn't want the smell of wet dog in the house. The door closes. And Snoopy sits there, thinking, "My mind reels with sarcastic replies." I have a steady job now and I'm not crazy about public relations in the first place—to my mind, it's a well-heeled species of begging—and I'm busy myself, Newspaper Boy, and I'm not in the mood for brusqueness with my morning coffee. And my own mind reels with at least two sarcastic observations that would make this guy vomit with rage. But no, I have to be a grownup and be reasonable and professional and bite my tongue. So do you in the course of your own day, I'm sure. Bummer, innit?
8/20/07
Transnationally Needy
See, it was just one of those things. There she was, and there I was, and you know who it was—we both had needs, and it just happened. My need was to buy a car, and hers was to sell one, and in the end I drove away and I thought that would be the end of it.
Then the phone calls started. "Hi Matt!" "Uh, hi. Who's this?" "It's Lise! From Toyotaworld! Just wondering if everything's OK with the car!" The calls kept coming. Like I might want to get together every week or so and buy a car from her. It wasn't just her, either, it was the whole staff there at Toyotaworld. Buy a used car from these people, and it's love forever. They write to me too. Often. Just yesterday I got a postcard, and they've got a way now to print my name all over the thing, not just in the body copy but in the graphics and the front and just everywhere. It fits in nicely, typographically, but I'll emphasize it just to help:
Matthew, there's a Camry on our lot just for you! (That's on the sign in the picture.) Matthew, are you ready to move forward? (Now the back.) Matthew—check out this month's lease offer on the Camry. Matthew, Toyota Camry is the best-selling car in America. Check out the new incentives that go along with it. August is a great time to buy, so come in today, Matthew.
So maybe I'll try the same tactic: Toyota, you make good cars but I already have a Toyota, Toyota, and it runs fine so I won't buy another car until that condition no longer pertains, Toyota, but thanks for thinking of me, Toyota, and the next time I need a car, Toyota, it'll probably be a Toyota.
Great cars. I love mine. The company's a little needy, though. You know what they say—can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
8/17/07
Another Person's Poison
In 1960 they made a film called Village of the Damned, and the people who made it understood that you can portray children in a creepy way. "Beware the stare that will paralyze the will of the world!" warned the film's poster. Then time passed, and eventually people wanted to believe there were angels around all the time, and they liked children too, so why not child angels? Child angels as statues you can buy at the garden center? Child angels with bowls so the darling little birds will come down and bathe in them? Child angels with nightmarish horror-film smiles? All I can say is, if those things don't creep you out, you're made of sterner stuff than I am. Either that, or—or—you're one of them! Oh nooooooooo!!!!!!!
In a matter of minutes I'll know whether the mattress I got in the mail is any good. At this moment I'm extremely aware of the chance I took. I'm optimistic, but you have to plan for the worst-case scenario (hat tip: icanhascheezburger):
8/16/07
The Meaning of Life
Not really. I did want to write about this mildly interesting, even rather uplifting, chance enounter I had the other day but I have to write it, not blog it. I have about 16 minutes before I need to get with the morning routine, and you can't really write anything at all in 16 minutes. So I'm blogging. F'rinstance, I'm listening to the BBC this morning, and they're talking about the sentencing of this former police minister from South Africa, Adriaan Vlok. He tried to kill an anti-apartheid activist by poisoning the guy's underwear. This already sends one's eyebrow upwards, but it seems that he became contrite after he got caught and "begged for forgiveness from Mr. Chikane last year by [editor's note: Get this,] washing his feet." Of course this a classical gesture of humility but it's also pretty weird. If there's anyone out there who's ever tried to kill me and now you feel bad, do me a favor and don't offer to wash my feet, OK? That's just going to weird me out. I'll wash my own feet. Just give me a gift certificate, or something.
Further deep thoughts: I woke up and it was humid, near 80 F. and all, and of course if you don't have the air on you're covered with a film of sweat. And then I thought about those films in prison camps and all where everybody is covered with a sheen of sweat all day, and I thought, is there someone on the set whose job it is to keep that sweat looking good? Someone who runs up between takes and sprays everyone from a bottle filled with water and glycerine? And what would that employee's title be? In an industry that calls people "key grip" and "best boy," it could be almost anything. Of course, their naming conventions aren't nearly as weird as those used in the horse racing world. "Yourtentormine" out of "Wigwam Duchess?" I mean, really.
Other people are waking up and thinking about motions they want to file, or mitral valves they're going to replace later today. And they're waking up in central air. I seem to be thinking about subcultures that name things in odd ways. I like money just as much as anyone else, but I think about how to make some for a while and then my mind wanders off onto other topics. I can't help it, it's my nature. I'll get to that other thing soon, I promise.
8/15/07
On the Road, Again
The New York Times had a thing yesterday about the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road, and they asked what people thought were its lessons, and I was amazed (well, not really) by the number of people who saw it as a great clarion call for freedom in the midst of repression. Look, I hate to say this, but anyone who thinks the Fifties were a time of great repression (have I said this before? Can't remember) gets his or her understanding of history and culture from syndicated sitcoms and nowhere else. For God's sake, go here and look at the "culture" section. Who repressed all those people? Who repressed Kerouac, come to think of it? Sure, I read the book, any teenager would. The life the characters in it lived seemed somewhat more interesting than my own, I suppose, since they never had to mow the lawn or do homework. They really never did much of anything, in the book, and I haven't read it much since I grew up myself. Kerouac, let's face it, was a sad guy who lived with his mom and drank. And here's a lesson for anyone who thinks you ought to be "free," whatever that means: If you're not wealthy, you have to give society something it values if you want a comfortable life. Then society will give you things back. That's the deal. It's what's assured the species' survival since our days on the savannahs of Africa. Do you want to learn how to make your own shoes? No? Then create value and receive different kinds of value—shoes, for example—in exchange. Period. If you don't want to do that, then don't whine to me about repression. I haven't got time for it, because I've got to get ready to go to work.
BTW, I have a slightly less curmudgeonly anecdote for you all but I really have to get ready to go. Later, I promise.
8/14/07
One Small Step
I have a tiny complaint about Barbara Morgan, the teacher who's currently orbiting over all our heads. First let me say that as far as I can tell without knowing her, she's a lovely person and you'd be lucky to have her for a teacher, a neighbor, or whatever. But I've worked with teachers for many years, and they have a slight tendency to blur the facts to make a point. Morgan did an interview from space with some schoolkids on the ground, and she was asked how being a teacher relates to her work as an astronaut. Her answer was toned down a bit by the New York Times, which paraphrased her as saying the two jobs were "not so different." Believe me, reporters will often write a story to make someone look better than they might come off if portrayed accurately. What Morgan said, in fact, was, "Astronauts and teachers actually do the same thing—we explore, we discover and we share." See, this is the kind of well-intentioned but saccharine rhetoric you get from these people. But let's face it, teachers and astronauts actually don't do the same thing. Teachers show you how to do things, and astronauts fly into space. I don't really see the overlap there—it's not the same thing at all.
It'll be just my luck that someday, probably soon, I'll meet the charming Ms. Morgan and she'll have been told about my being the one person on the globe who ever said anything negative about her. Listen, Barbara, did you read the first part? I meant every word. I just think the world would be better, that we'd take one small step forward as a global society, if we tried to speak clearly. That's all I'm saying.
That was on the radio early this morning as I was trying to get my eyelids to open. The radio was playing the BBC, and they switched to some sort of comedy festival in Edinburgh or some such, and the announcer blandly suggested that the festival offered two types of humor—the American kind, and the subtler European type. He said it just like that. And again, I felt I had to rise to object. Exhibit A, your honor, after which the defense rests its case, an example of that subtle European humor:
8/12/07
Taking Steps
If sleep deprivation is torture, my lousy, worn-out mattress had better call its lawyers and stay away from The Hague. But I'm taking steps! Yes, I am. First I researched. (Don't expect any help from Consumer Reports about which particular mattress to buy, by the way: They natter on for a while about how different mattresses are made, and then throw up their hands by saying try them and see which feels right. They might as well be talking about religion, or potential spouses.) So to try mattresses I went to Macy's the other day, and looked into the conventional options, and I laid for a rapturous moment on the Tempur-Pedic, which I now am sophisticated enough about mattresses to know is "memory foam." Memory foam mattresses, I discovered, all share one characteristic: They're hideously overpriced.
But browsing around online I discovered Bedinabox.com. I carefully read all the literature and took note of the perky graphics (I liked the goose) and decided I just may go for this. The equivalent of a Tempur-Pedic mattress for about a sixth of the Tempur-Pedic price? Gee, Matt, doesn't that sound too good to be true? Actually maybe not. Back in the days of Duesenbergs, Stutz Bearcats, Packards, and so forth, the average person couldn't buy a car. Then Henry Ford came along, and said maybe a car doesn't have to be a bauble for the super-rich—if you sold them cheaply, maybe lots and lots of people could and would buy cars. The Bedinabox people say the Tempur-Pedics, etc. are ridiculously marked up, and the Bedinabox mattress is priced to make a profit and no more. Hmm—China does that, so why not Tennesseans? At any rate, I'm going for it. If it's at all good, I save more than two grand. And if it's terrible, I can return it. How much trouble could it be to return a mattress through the mail?
8/10/07
Finally
Well, it's a choice between blogging or unsnapping all those damnable little rings so I can wash the shower curtain. My god, what a marvelous age! Heaven for procastinators and procrastinatrixes. So anyway, I guess the hugest, most astounding news, the one we're leading with for this broadcast, is that it was pleasantly cool last night. As I've often said, my administration has always maintained a steadfastly anti-summer policy. You could perform a summerectomy on the year and that would suit me just fine. And the past week was particularly swampy and unpleasant. But last night a front rolled through and by dinnertime (I grilled some chicken I picked up from an independent supermarket delightfully named "Zingo's") there was a cool breeze going through the living room.
I knew, of course, that it wouldn't last, but I also knew that if I waited just a few more weeks the weather would cool for real, and a metaphor came to me. A man is attracted to a woman (you can adjust this metaphor to suit your orientation) and wonders if it's mutual, and then she invites him to a party at her house. At the party, she makes plenty of time for him, they're talking and talking over by the bookcase, and it becomes clear to both of them that the attraction is mutual, and the runway clear for a landing. There's a burst of laughter and a shouted question; her presence is needed in the kitchen for a moment. She turns to go, but first leans in and half-whispers, "I'll be back" and her hand rests for a moment on his arm. Then she's off, and he watches her go, smitten, knowing she'll be back. That was how I felt about the cool weather—I knew it would be back, and that made me happy and patient.
That was last night. Unfortunately, for the metaphor at least, the delightful weather continues this morning.
All the hip 'n' cool photographers out there will tell you that interesting things happen when the concrete, natural world starts to arrange itself in ways that would be interesting as abstract, non-pictorial compositions. The photographer's job is a) to notice it and b) to have had the forethought to bring along a camera. There's a classic photography school lesson in which you're required to shoot a whole roll—photography used to be done on this stuff called "film," which came in "rolls"—a whole roll of 24 shots or so in your bathroom. The one below isn't from a bathroom but the same principle applies:
8/9/07
Oof—up early yesterday to slop the hogs and feed the chickens, then work all day, then drive an hour into the city for a meeting of the local Sierra Club group, then the weary way home again, and waking up tired and sore. Downstairs in the kitchen, making coffee, contemplating the utter lack of any food that would normally fit into a meal that would look like breakfast. And then, amid the murk of my mood, a warm sun rises: Leaving the healthy-food store the group meets at, I had bought a bag of peaches. It's a banner year for peaches, it seems, here in the mid-Atlantic, they're especially sweet and tasty this year, and I have an entire bag of them that I had only just remembered, standing there. Peaches and coffee—what could be better? And that's my news this morning.
8/8/07
The Age of Information
I have a bottle of Smoking Loon zinfandel sitting on my table in front of me. Now, often, when you're shopping for wine, you pick up a bottle and look at the back label to see what the producers have to say about that particular wine. Here's what the Smoking Loon people have to say:
Got that? That's it. That's what they choose to tell you on the back of their bottle. There's also some information about the wine's containing sulfites and a little message to pregnant people and others from the Surgeon General. I suppose starting a winery is one way to get your creative writing published, but it seems like the long way around the barn to me, I must say. Of course, there's also the question of why bizarre stuff like this shows up in ads today, and there's an article here about the subject, but I have to warn you that it starts like this: "We propose a framework for classifying postmodern advertising discourse that places intertextuality at the creative center of media convergence." If that seems promising to you, knock yourself out. I think I'm just going to have a glass of wine and try not to puzzle my head over such things.
8/7/07
The God of Summer
I can hear thunder rumbling off in the distance, and I really ought to disconnect the computer wires and all but I'm taking a chance here. It's hot and sticky, it's tropical, and it's like living on the set of A Streetcar Named Desire. You know, the way they were always sweaty and mopping themselves off, drooping with the heat, occasionally getting into fistfights, and generally abandoning any hope of ever being cool and fresh and civilized. Today, this morning, the humidity and heat are like savage primitive gods. Except for air conditioning! Yay! Except I only have it in the bedroom and if I retreat there I lose my Net connection. So I'm hurrying this along.
Speaking of cool and civilized, I was in Macy's yesterday, shopping for beds. I liked the cheaper ones better than the more expensive ones, which have this poofy layer on top that really didn't work for me. That made me feel good, but then I tried the Tempur-Pedic, which makes you gasp in delight the moment you sink into it. It's absolutely unlike any bed you've ever slept in, unless of course you've slept in a Tempur-Pedic already. Naturally, it was $2,669. I'm not in a position at the moment to spend that much. There was a grandmother there shopping for mattresses for her two grandchildren, whom she'd brought along. They flung themselves on every bed and said that every one was the best but we all agreed that the Tempur-Pedic was the winner by a mile. And we laughed about the price. "It's a little rich for my blood," I said. "I just want to see how the other half lives." But someday I'll have central air and a Tempur-Pedic bed. Just not today. Sigh. And here's the best comedy sketch ever on the subject of buying beds:
8/6/07
They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To
Yesterday I was reading one last essay about the exit of Bergman and Antonioni—yeah, I know, I lead a fun life—and the writer said something that struck me. "The idea that a difficult work had special value," he said, "that being challenged was a distinct form of pleasure, enjoyed a prestige, at the time, that is almost unimaginable today. We would rather be teased than troubled, and the measure of artistic sophistication is cleverness rather than seriousness."
It struck me because I was thinking along the same lines. Who are the great artists, film directors and writers, novelists, the great anythings of today? Who aspires not to celebrity, but rather manages to achieve greatness, willingly or not? Who's grappling with what used to be called the Big Questions? And where's the stuff that draws you into its world with a certain mysterious promise, like a forest that is clearly dark and probably dangerous but may very well be enchanted into the bargain? I remember a time when certain books, films, works of art seemed to beckon and warn you at the same time, they hinted at great things they might grant you if you were worthy, if you were brave enough and smart enough and simply willing enough to venture in and do the work and take the risks necessary. T.S. Eliot, say, or Jasper Johns, or Rilke, or Joyce, or, well, Bergman and Antonioni. The writer, who's probably about a decade older than me, remembers people arguing about which of those two was more important like they were Ford and Chevy, or something. I can't imagine hearing people having such an argument now about any two serious artists in any genre. I know serious people—not owlish, not solemn, but serious, you know, grownup—in daily life. But the cultural world, the political, the media world—no. Not too much true seriousness there. It's a loss. There's much I like about our postmodern world, but I remember the late modern one too. Back in the bad old days, gang, people who considered themselves even reasonably bright would typically read some damn challenging books and see so-called "difficult" films and art and so forth and then pour Manhattans and talk about what it all might mean. I know, I know, there are smart people talking about tricky stuff today too, but it's not the same, somehow. I think our boy in the Times was on to something. On the other hand, if there are lots of truly great artists at work today and I'm simply oblivious—a possibility that is more than distinct—I'll be embarrassed and glad, so if that's the case then let me know. K thnx bai!
8/4/07
Oh My
I wouldn't be talking about this if I hadn't encountered it totally by accident. A colleague of a friend became curious about a third party and googled him, and discovered that he's quite active in the furry subculture. If you're active in it too, forgive my inexpert use of the terms and so forth, but I'm just encountering this and all. See, they describe themselves as simply people interested in "anthropomorphic animals," and to help us non-furry people get the idea, they make reference to Bugs Bunny. They also mention that they've been portrayed in the media in unfair and sensationalistic ways. But the thing is, we're really not talking about Bugs Bunny here—that's really just a frame of reference thing. There's a certain style of art they like, and if you're familiar with anime and manga you'll find it familiar. It's animals that walk upright and look like very buff people except for the paws and ears and such. So far, this is enough to raise the eyebrows of potential employers and in-laws, and it gets quite a bit more interesting as you delve. Some of the art and stories are of an adult nature. Their term for this is "yiffy," supposedly based on the sound an Arctic fox makes as it's mating. Some furries like to dress up in what they call "fursuits," OK? And they have conventions. (One was called "ConFurence.") I hate to say it, but this is the sort of thing that leads to media coverage that the coverees might inevitably perceive as unfair and sensationalistic. That's just how the world is, and the furries, who strike me as not the most worldly of people, shouldn't be surprised. Mostly I'm just glad they're finding each other. People need validation, and company, certainly. So for the record, I'm adopting a live-and-let-live policy. I get a kick out of Warner Brothers cartoons and really like Bugs Bunny myself—just, you know, not that way.
8/2/07
It's Ba-ack
I've had this infrequent but fairly hideous back pain thing for years now, owing in large part to the fact that I find it offputtingly inconvenient to replace worn-out mattresses and box springs. My current set is so beat that I might as well sleep on a big bag of sand, and if I don't sleep in just the right posture I wake up in horrible, persistent pain. It feels a lot like an alligator had clamped me in its jaws around the midsection. This makes rolling over, bending down, standing up and all the other parts of an active lifestyle painful enough that I feel just a bit faint when I do them. That was the beginning of the week; it's getting a little better now. So let's just say that if you have chronic back pain—or if you're currently being clamped around the middle by an alligator—I know how you feel.
I do try to ask myself if my attitude toward a given subject is balanced, constructive, all that. So I've been going back and forth about this Minneapolis bridge business. It highlights our existential situation—at any moment, pow, you can get hit with an aneurysm of the aorta, say, or a smallish meteorite and that's it, sayonaraville. And then on the other hand, at any moment you probably won't. So you should accept the precariousness of existence while trusting that you'll probably get home and go to sleep and wake up to another day, right? No need to be a safety mom, in denial about that precariousness. And yet, you wonder, isn't it someone's job, in a supposedly advanced technological society, isn't it someone's job to see that big bridges don't just fall down between one moment and the next?
OK, gang, gonna head uptown and drop a bill off at the post office. I know, I know, so 20th century but it's a morsel of exercise and may help to unsnarl the lower back to the point that I can do some real exercise. Play through the pain, man. So I'd like to wish everyone in the world a good day and if you're doing evil things for goodness' sake stop.
© Copyright 2007 by Matt Freeman. All Rights Reserved.