Look, Ma, No Politics?

I’m writing about this here because it seems off-topic for the Facebook post that inspired it. Another local landmark is failing(another month or so of so much communal mourning, I may understand Joe Biden after all. Yikes!) and, as people often do, this group made plans to hang out there a few last times.  After one such event, one man posted something to the effect of how everyone got together with no politics, came together as  Generation X, more or less, and shouldn’t we try to do that all the time?

I’ve been thinking about that for a while, and not only because it pretty much puts parts of my life’s work in a category with getting action figures out of the toilet(except plumbers make more)
It seems to me that there are a lot of political questions involved with this topic, just starting with “Why was it so important that we learn shopping as a form of amusement in the first place?” although regular readers may notice that even in my new radicalized mode, I still buy things recreationally on occasion.I think politics have been equated  with partisanship, hot takes, and doing something we don’t like to pwn the other side. Yes, those things are there, and I don’t always like them either, but I don’t think it’s wise to stop considering social questions to get a little cheap peace and quiet.

Other questions to ponder: Why don’t the people behind “us” have any money? Why are so many of the business press so eager to keep writing the same old hack “The bad old internet is why retail can’t sell nice things,” story over and over and so much less about businesses bleeding these companies dry? Why is it so expensive to get out of college now and it seems like people get so much less? What are we going to do about people like  Jeff Bezos and his seemingly endless determination to pave Paradise and put up a fulfillment center in its place.

At Night I Have Too Much Time On My Hands and Think About...

-Much as I've been enjoying re-watching "Frasier" before I go to bed, now that I'm older, I don't really think that Niles worshiping Daphne for years is much of a basis for healthy Niles/Daphne.(aside from the whole thing that showrunners like to tie things up in the end, usually finishing things up with children so boring that they take the edge off of how much you miss your favorite couple...Jim and Pam(cough)
_Watching Obama now is like watching some show that I loved as a teen and wondering why I dug it so much.
-Sometimes I think the Hallmark Channel has some sort of gene-harvesting project so that they can have so many young actors who look like already-famous people from a distance.Since the plots are so often the same, I'm free to spend the running time thinking "Isn't that..." but it mostly is not.

Considering the deadwood movie as disability art,,,

I found it somewhat darkly comic that a script written by someone with dementia` had so many flashbacks on it, but after ten years and so many events, we need them. The whole movie is about how statehood of South Dakota represents the end of an era(not least because former sometimes-evil mastermind Al Swearingen is laid up with what may or may not have been cirrhosis) Technology, in the form of the telephone, has made inroads and some townsfolk are uneasy.Statehood festivities attract the attention of fabulously corrupt businessman-turned-California Senator Hearst who doesn’t let his new eminence distract from his ability to do dirt(the more things change, the more they stay the same, right?)

It was so great to see Tim Olyphant’s Seth Bullock stand uncowed  by Hearst’s attempts to muscle in on everyone… I hope nobody will read into anything about my feelings about real-life police reform from the satisfaction I got when Bullock let the townsfolk whale on Hearst for a while before locking him up.

I wonder if Milch’s own condition made him more likely to write about life as more fragile, or if it makes sense because the frontier, for good or ill, is not something that is built to last.(Have to admit, it was on my mind to finally watch this because of the epidemic and Calamity Jane’s heroism in Season 1. Are there Janes coming from this crisis?) Slightly less cursing and graphic language compared to the series overall…wonder if that’s a reflection of the settlement’s maturation or Milch having to share writing duties. Possibly both.

Not saying I'm glum...

but the writing practice I found myself working on today was an obit for myself.Aside from the fact that it's not an upper, as I couldn't conjure up 105 years of satisfying adventures, some research that ended  the toxic part of toxic masculinity or the cure for coronavirus in the fluff under my couch, maybe I'd recommend it as a way to learn what my turning points are.

my essay "The Shoe-In"

Note: I sort of regret not actually trying to befriend this chick, mostly because I let embarrassment define my life  back then. On the other hand, given my more typical pattern of trying to hold on too tight, maybe this was a flash of wisdom.The Shoe-in

In Which We Try To Stage A Virtual Reading....

Got dressed up today to put "The Happiest Place On Earth" on video to promote "Dozen"(Sometimes I wish I could get attention for work that's a little bit more...post-collegiate, but that's another topic.)
My brother was very patient with creating a fifteen-minute video file on his phone, but we can't figure out how to disseminate it.( Don't have a camera on my PC...partially by design, and partially cause  I'm just not good at setting up things.)
Really thought that would be simpler.
Hope it sounds OK and everything so the next post isn't "The Day We Shared That Ugly Video"
Here isa review of Dozen,  in which your correspondent failed to get a shout-out again. Going to be outlandishly positive and pretend to think that maybe my style is so deft that I make it look so easy, it's like noting the exact moment a flower springs up.(Jon Lovitz voice) Yeah, that's the ticket.(/Jon Lovitz voice)

It's one thing...

reading about the "ambivalence" in Revolution your whole life.  It's another to know how it feels(well, sort of. Don't have a London estate, and don't really think the teachings of Mao factor in much this time)
But I feel like I understand:
When you talk about destruction,
don't you know that you can
Count me out?(in?)
More than I ever have.
Because I don't really like people tearing shit up, right? I am a Democratic Socialist, who also shops as a diversion from time to time(Which is a contradiction, but, given the amounts in question, only a gotcha if you are stuck on socialists being brawny Russians standing in line for carrots/bluejeans)
But I also don't think that:
the people that do this are the worst criminals we've got,
or that there is a secret verse that's like
"And God saw the Target, and beheld that it was good."