#445

Whoo! Got-damn, shit, and HELL FUCK. 

Silence has invaded this space, never a thing I like to let stretch out, but the times demand what the times demand. Typing that made me itch to segue into current affairs, but I'm not going to do that. Commentary on this planet and its human doings has never been easier or less necessary. Necessary isn't exactly what I mean, but I didn't want to say pointless, because then that would sort of make it my job.

What I mean is that in the current moment, everyone knows what is wrong and why, and no one can do a single thing about it that's going to affect our sinister momentum.

We are but spectators, trapped in a garish, filthy arena which constantly extracts a toll we cannot refuse to pay; our untouchable criminal overlords ensconced in a crystal bubble set above it all, gurgling and fondling themselves as they roll around in a reeking paste of champagne, melted butter, and various illegal meats. Anyone pretending otherwise is part of the toll-extracting process, their perverse ambitions driving them towards that lofty perch I was just describing. 

Our only autonomy, indeed, our only ability, is to stop paying attention, try to enjoy each day as much as we can fashion ways to do so, and let whatever is going to kill us kill us in its own good time. This peasant wisdom is all that remains.

For my money, the expectation is to be killed by a drone. Accidentally or on purpose and designated an accident, or finally on purpose for a specific reason but the stated reason being something completely different and probably defamatory. Does it matter? I've decided that it doesn't at all. Drone, wild animal, heat, zombie, plague, explosion, impact, bullet--who gives a flying fuck how it happens and what people say afterwards if they even notice. Drown me. Choke me out. Defenestrate me. Fire me into space. Put a plastic rifle in my hands and send me out against ten million desperate, starving kinsmen  you call my enemies. I'll chuck it off to the side and wait for it to happen. I'm not fighting anyone about any of this. Can't bother with feelings about it anymore.  

RRRRRRANYHOW, reason I haven't posted since the last post is no longer that I am too tired and still adjusting to all the change--adjustment does continue, but at least my energy is rising nicely--but that I actually have too much to say. It has been difficult to approach the text field with confidence that I could walk away from it without making a massive dirigible of a post ten topics deep, thousands of words per topic.

I'll just talk about some culture today. I mean, now that I've already talked about all that other shit.

Culture! Love that stuff, and there's plenty to tell.

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Ezra and I have been watching Star Trek all the time, maybe I mentioned it. Been going on awhile. A few episodes of the original series, most of The Next Generation, and now Voyager. We'll be watching Star Trek for a good minute, I expect. It's good! It's way better than Trekkies made it out to be. No one makes Trek as unappetizing as its evangelists. 

But it's good. Good as fuck, actually. There can be no settling of this debate, but naturally I am of the opinion that it's no Star Wars, though that is not the fault of Star Trek, as nothing can be. Frankly, it's not even a good comparison. They are in fact extremely different animals.

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I have sometimes mentioned about movies I have seen here, but never anything even remotely approaching the exhaustive record-keeping I apply to the books I read. Even with the books, there are probably at least fifty or even more I have forgotten to mention. In fact I watch a lot of movies! Happens all the time.

However, the tenor has changed. My most intense period of watching movies--multiples in the day and night--was in my early twenties, and my rough estimate is about five hundred movies in a two-year period. I have gone through several more periods of a movie or two every day since, the last one being in 2019 and 2020 when I wasn't recording much of anything. Sometimes I don't watch any at all for long periods, or only occasionally.

Beginning before I started at the theater to two nights ago, I was watching cartoons and concentrating on other long-form stuff. The only movies I've watched all year were all the Star Wars movies, though I did those at least twice each.

Now that I am at the theater and now that I am done rewatching all Adventure Time and Steven Universe materials, I am ready to watch ten million movies again and shall endeavor to mark them down as I do the books, except I'm not going to bother with directors or anything, Titles only, man. Lionizing directors is not a thing with me, though I respect the role as much as anyone. Movies are everybody that made them though, and if you're interested, find them, watch them, and read the credits clear through to the end.

Wise Blood

Tuesday

Janet Planet

These movies were all excellent.

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Been reading Ursula K. Le Guin's The Wind's Twelve Quarters and The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens, by Stephen Apkon. Fun stuff to read in tandem, trying to balance nonfiction and fiction more closely by consistently being reading at least one of each.

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What movie will I watch today? I'll find out, and you'll hear about it in good time.

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Musicwise, been sharpening my knowledge of and rabidly consuming cartoon soundtracks, game soundtracks, chiptunes, vaporwave, African folk (especially Malinese, my favorite), exciting jazz records minted in recent years, oddments and explorations here and there. Albums and other recordings of note inclide Deltron 3030 and the Deltron 3030 instrumentals, new extended recordings of the soundtracks to The Lord of the Rings movies by Howard Shore PLUS a six-movement orchestration of the music from all three films also by Howard Shore--the new choral arrangements in particular are amazing.

Heard belatedly that John Frusciante was back with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and they cut one with Rick Rubin, which has resulted in true greatness in the past, so I listened to part of that endeavor before getting bored and doing something else. I guess maybe they should finally have made an instrumental album if they wanted me to care. Anthony was once one of my icons, but now he's like my dad--lovable, worthy of respect, but needs to get the fuck out of my way. It's funny because they were born the same year, and I sure did rely on both of them to grow up. But one also grows beyond; it is the way of this world. I am more than they, as they were more than their fathers. I still need them, too, but on different terms and different timelines, for different things. Anthony keeps doing the same thing, though. 

Maybe I'll like that record in a couple of years, or their next one right away. Hope so. I like liking stuff, put work into enjoying stuff. It's an important thing to bring to culture, to criticism, to how you live your life. It's easy to hate, simple to excoriate. No flex at all, just gunpowder, and gunpowder is weaksauce. Loving something, seeing something beyond yourself and the power you get from tearing it down, is hard work, but essential. That's where the growth comes in. That stregthens the heart and the eye and the mind and the stomach. 

Not to say some shit doesn't need tearing down. Just that it should come after a great effort to love and understand deeply.

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(Kermit the Frog voice) 

That's probably the correct note for my exit.

PEACE YOU MAGNIFICENT BITCHES 

(end Kermit)

--JL