Something New
Listening to my audience and using it as an excuse to slack…I mean innovate!
So I have heard from a number of my dear readers (all five of you) and heard folk often skip directly to the Good/Bad/Ugly section before diving into the viscous, sloppy, and starchy pasta ala tobinesca of my main articles.
I get it. My main diatribes can be laborious and overwrought and the Internet caters to noshable bite-sized info nuggets. As ever, I’m dillydallying in the wrong playground (and getting yelled at by moms who think I’m a predator).
So I’m introducing a new format. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Exclusive! The GBUE! (the g is silent)
I’m hoping this provides y’all with something a bit more readable and it will do two things for me:
It will give me more time to complete my research. For instance, I’m currently working on a piece about a weird new christian right wing movement at work at the county level. And getting info on them has been a tall task.
It will allow me to not feel the pressure of having a big idea / big take and let me churn out smaller, less fibrous material. Which should mean there won’t be five week gaps in posts.
Anyway, here’s hoping y’all like it.
[Also, because I’m nothing if not longwinded, I suppose I owe a bit of an explanation about my recent silence. Nothing dramatic has happened, but I’ve been stuck in a bit of state of overwhelm and it’s meant that these little missives have felt a bit ineffective like I were whispering sweet nothings into gale force winds. That said, putting my thoughts into the world is a good exercise for purely selfish reasons. So I will get back on this horse and await the next bucking.]
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Good
– Screen Size: I have a theory. The more you want to engage with video content, the bigger the screen you should be using. For instance, instagram and tiktok are perfectly fine on a phone. They’re not actually and I’ve shunned them both to the abyss (i.e. removed them from my phone) but that’s another story. But short shit works on the phone. Youtube vids running 5 to 30 minutes are fine on a laptop. But longer form content should be enjoyed either on a full screen television or (in the case of films) in a theater with a big screen (beware the theaters with the little screens). The more you need to pay attention the more attention the screen should command.
Also, break yourself of the double screen habit (watching tv while using your phone). It’s been killing my attention span so drastically I can feel it. Gah.
– Doppelganger: I have a soul doppelganger and it’s pretty rad. To be clear we are not physical doppelgangers. She is of Vietnamese descent while I am northern european as pickled herring. She is she while I am he. She is Canadian. I am a citizen of the United States of Trump. She is young and full of potential. I am a grayhaired husk of lost opportunity. We are not the same. And yet…And yet our world views, our likes and dislikes, our oddities and reactions to life’s inputs are wildly aligned. We used to work together. We don’t any longer. But we meet up for a Zoom call every few months and our half hour chats routinely go 2 hours and I dig having her as a friend. So Linda - tip o’ the cap to you. Thank you for making me feel a little more understood and a little less singularly weird. Oh and we’ve never met in person (I have no clue how tall she is) so if we share an odd birthmark or someother string theory connection, we have no idea.
– The Pitt: I binged the HBO show The Pitt a few weeks back. And I’m not sure how I feel about it. I mean it’s good and, if you’re not squeamish about blood and viscera and high stress moral conundrums, you’ll enjoy it. That said, it’s also a little heavy handed and a lot melodramatic. But I do believe we could solve a lot of America’s problems by asking ER workers (from doctors to orderlies) what’s ailing our society and what people need. Those folk (the real ones) are tasked with cleaning up the worst of us (not the people, but the repercussions of our choices) day in and day out and they deserve all the kudos.
– Sinners: Y’all - go see Sinners in the theater. First movie in a while that’s stuck with me. Like images and themes and mood. Michael B. Jordan plays twins and it brings Jim Crow Mississippi to life from a black perspective and it has vampires and it’s just a well made movie that’s both ripe for fistfuls of nervous popcorn eating and deep rumination on what it means to be American.
The Bad:
– Headlines: When you’re an unemployed copywriter born in the 1970s, the headline you might least want to read would sound something like this: The Gen X Career Meltdown. Well, fuck me.
– Fish Burps: I’m not a big cooker of fish. I should be. Low fat protein is healthy. (I do worry about the over fishing crisis…but that’s for another day). Anyhoo - I don’t cook a lot of fish. But I came across a simple easy salmon fish cake recipe (here) which include salmon, fresh dill, capers, smoked salmon, a dab of mustard and panko. I made them last night and they were delicious. I highly recommend with one big caveat - FISH BURPS! What the fuck fish? I seasoned you with herbs and spices and delicately fried you so that you didn’t just taste like fish and then you rise from the gastrointestinal depths like a leviathan and force me to just taste half digested fish air. No. No. Nope. Uh-uh. Bad fish, bad. Also, made tacos. Chopped jalapenos. Ate tacos with delicious spicy jalapenos. Then had an itch in my eye. Ahhhh. Jalapeno eye! Bad jalapeno, bad!
– Andor: There’s a new Star Wars series running on Disney Plus called Andor. It’s a prequel to Rogue One (which I never saw) which was a prequel to Star Wars: A New Hope which was my first taste of science fiction at the tender age of 5 and totally changed my world. I watched a few episodes because critics are raving about it and I have to say - not so good. And then I was talking to my brother who is an even more ravenous reader of sci fi than I am (which is saying something) and we got to the nut of why Star Wars no longer speaks to us. Simply put, the Star Wars universe doesn’t ask very interesting questions about humanity. In fact, it intentionally follows some of the oldest storytelling tropes in humanity - the hero journey and battles of good and evil and the power of friendship. Which is all well and good but those questions don’t require science fiction. They get told in westerns and in war movies and in suspense thrillers. They are genre basics. Good sci-fi trucks in other questions like what rights should conscience AIs be given and what alternatives to hierarchical power structures could exist and how would they work and can conscious AI experience trauma and what sorts of societies would hyper intelligent spiders or cephalopods build based on their umwelt. The Star Wars universe doesn’t explore anything remotely mind expanding. Han and Chewie are still fucking cool, of course. Boba Fett and trade wars not so much. Sidenote: I could not be more excited about the launch of the Muderbot Diaries series on Apple TV next week. Go read the books – they are great.
The Ugly:
– Fascist Amerikka: Holy fuckballs folks. We’re there. It’s here. The terror has arrived. The death of due process, the dissolution of judicial power, the sycophantic ass kissing, the erratic whimsy of a megalomaniacal demgogue writ large. It’s here. And I have no idea what to do about it. Except being loving and kind and face of fear and cruelty. And writing my representatives. And packing my go bag.
– Recession: I’ve been unemployed for 18 months. I’ve applied to what seems like countless jobs. I’ve even had a few interviews. No luck so far and it looks like our economy is about to nosedive so I’m pretty sure my future prospects are sinking. I know people who are moving out of the country. I know people who are on the verge of homelessness. I know people who are making a fucking killing. I’m leaning into a “this too shall pass” mindset, but honestly the big picture trends are troubling. Artificial Intelligence is a game changer and our social structure is not prepared for it by which I mean that our society is already unaffordable (food, rent, healthcare) and the machines are going to be taking more jobs than we can replace which means more people out of work which means more people who can’t afford basic needs. Are the billionaires ready for universal basic income? Of course they’re not. That’s why they’ve taken over the government. It’s fucking dark times y’all. Real fucking dark. I love you.
Internet of the Day:
Quote of the Week:
“Nothing fails like prayer.” – Folk wisdom
Finally:
Fuck me!?!?!?!
