Immanentize the Empathy
[Our cat Poe having a stare-down with a rabbit in the early morning.]
This past week was rough, so no real update.
Subject: Environment, Colonization
Setting: Ocean
Genre: Adventure
August was an insanely busy month for me, but did offer up occasional reading time, mostly in airplanes, and at airports, and sitting in the public areas of convention centers before anybody else was awake.
[Great Golden Digger Wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus) on a mint blossom.]
And so ends the month of August. Cooler evenings mean better sleep, if not necessarily more sleep. That comes with retirement or other forms of unemployment. I am almost fully recovered from the travels and travails of the past several weeks, but could use another couple of decades of down-time.
Other than the slow progress through Simulacra and Simulation, I am giving my brain a break and just wandering through my shelves like one might browse the contents of a bookstore.
This week I tried to catch up on my journaling – writing down the events of the past few weeks so that in the years and decades to come, I don’t lose those memories.
Subject: Kaiju, Apocalypse
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Science Fiction
A random comment on a social media prompted an old memory to surface, and I went down a small rabbit-hole of music research.
The Cookies, “On Broadway”, from their 1954 album Presenting The Cookies.
The Crystals, “On Broadway”, from their 1962 album Twist Uptown.
The Drifters, “On Broadway”, released in 1963.
George Benson, “On Broadway”, from his 1978 album Weekend in L.A.
Gary Numan, “On Broadway”, from Numan’s live album Living Ornaments ’79.
Clem Curtis & The Foundations, “On Broadway”, released in 1984.
[A sign warning of the potential presence of snakes and alligators, at the edge of a sidewalk, at a facility in Orlando, Florida.]
I am back from a somewhat-sudden couple of weeks of travel. Z and I spent six days driving approximately 1,500 miles around Lake Michigan, visiting friends and family in Bloomington, IL, Madison, WI, Marquette, MI and Sault Ste Marie, MI, as well as stops at various places in between. We deemed this a necessary trip, as our family members are aging at the expected pace, which is to say, faster than we would like.
We returned home late Saturday afternoon, then I immediately began preparing for a work trip to Orlando. We left for the airport a little after 7:00 Sunday morning, and by late afternoon I was in Florida.
I spent three days doing work stuff, then hopped the plane for home. Z picked me up at the Grand Rapids airport around 11:45 Wednesday evening, and we arrived back home around 1:00 am Thursday.
And now I am tired, and very much looking forward to NOT traveling for a few months.
I finished The Unaccountability Machine while en route to Orlando, and made good headway in Simulacra and Simulation while at the work event. By the time I boarded the flight home my brain was complete mush, so I loaded up the wonderful We are Legion (We are Bob), the first book in the Bobiverse series by Dennis Taylor. It was just what my brain needed after such an exhausting summer.
Per events of the past couple of weeks, nothing here. Not even journaling.
Subject: Evolution, Colonization
Setting: Virtual Reality
Genre: Magic Realism
Starbuck, “Moonlight Feels Right“, released in December 1975. After picking me up at the airport, Z suggested we stop somewhere for food, as I had not eaten since breakfast. So we stopped at The Grand Coney for some comfort food. A song came on the radio which I vaguely recognized, though I couldn’t make out any of the lyrics. So I searched “70s song marimba solo”, and this was the first result. So if your day can be improved by a marimba solo, this is the song for you.
[Looking west toward Division Avenue from the second floor of the YWCA West Michigan.]
My evening comfort read is Jim Harrison’s The Raw and the Cooked. The ten minutes between when I lay down in bed and when I fall asleep has been my only reading time this week.
Nothing new to report. Work ate my brain.
Subject: Cryptids, Mutants
Setting: Academia
Genre: Cyberpunk
PhD, “Little Suzi’s on the Up,” from their 1981 self-titled debut album. This was the fifth video played on MTV the day the station launched.
[Zucchini blossoms in the plant which is slowly taking over our back yard.]
Less than halfway into summer, and summer seems to be almost over. The long heatwave finally broke and the outdoor temperature of the past few nights has been down in the fifties. I have slept better over the past three nights than at any point since early June.
I am about halfway through Dan Davies’ The Unaccountability Machine. Still both enlightening and infuriating.
The only thing I wrote in the past week was Javascript.
Subject: Apocalypse, Genius Loci
Setting: Urban
Genre: Noir
Tom Lehrer, “So Long Mom (A Song for World War III).” Lehrer died this past Saturday, July 26, at the of age of 97.
I had some time off in July, so I put that time to good use getting caught up with my reading. Or rather, using reading as an escapist mechanism to avoid the fact that I still have at least a decade before I will be able to retire.
[A crew digging in the street, replacing lead water lines with copper.]
This was a rough week for famous people. In short order, we lost Ozzy Osbourne, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Chuck Mangione, and Hulk Hogan. All of these men were fixtures in my life growing up in the 1980s. The first three were amazing human beings. Hogan? Not so much.
I am slowly working my way through Dan Davies’ The Unaccountability Machine. It is an interesting exploration of cybernetics applied to business, and it is making me want to both study cybernetics and burn the entire EVERYTHING to the ground.
I haven’t managed much progress on anything. Too much work and life stress.
Subject: Genius Loci, Mutants
Setting: Labyrinth
Genre: Dystopian
Ozzy Osbourne and Lita Ford, “Close My Eyes Forever,” from the 1988 album Lita. Rest ye well, Mr. Osbourne.
[ A Black Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar on a dill plant. ]
My first week back at work after a two-week break, and as usual, it was not so much a break as a deferred workload. Therefore this past week was exceptionally busy. Little time for creative pursuits.
I did find time on Friday to spend an hour or so with my friend Mark, beating on each other in the back yard. Mark teaches karate and kickboxing, and I teach kung fu and tai chi, so the techniques we come up with tend to be an interesting mix of a variety of sources. It was a good workout. And I feel it today in most of my joints.
I am currently about a quarter of the way through The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies, which explores how supposedly-smart, competent people can end up making stupid and destructive decisions. To sum up: They don’t. Or rather, the larger capitalist system is set up so that event the well-meaning (lol) members of the Professional Managerial Class couldn’t make truly ethical decisions even if they wanted to. I am already angry, and expect I will only become more angry as I work my way through the book.
Baudrillard is breaking my brain. I am about 20 pages into Simulacra and Simulation and need to take frequent breaks so my head-meat doesn’t char and set off the smoke alarm.
I spent some time reviewing the manuscripts I printed out last week, and I think Neighbors can be cleaned up and turned into a real draft, but Cacophonous will need to be re-written from scratch, though the bones of the story are solid. Now I just need to free up the necessary time to do the work.
Subject: Revenge, Colonization
Setting: Wilderness
Genre: Solarpunk
“The Ludlows,” from the soundtrack to Legends of the Fall, composed by James Horner. Jim Harrison‘s Legends of the Fall is one of my very favorite books, and the movie does it justice, thanks in large part to Horner’s extraordinary score.
[A small snail on the boardwalk at Huff Park.]
I was on vacation for the past two weeks, and much to my surprise, the more vacation time I had, the more my energy level diminished. I suppose that is just another symptom of burnout and depression, or maybe it is simply because I am 56 and not getting any younger.
Currently working my way through Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation because I look so cool when reading it in a cafe. But before that I read Travis Baldree’s Bookshops and Bonedust, a prequel of sorts to his wonderful Legends and Lattes. Bookshops and Bonedust was decent, but not as good as Legends.
Back in 2018, for NaNoWriMo, I wrote a book called Neighbors: A Malediction, which was a lightly-fictionalized version of my encounters with an obnoxious neighbor over several years. I completed the first draft, as much as a first draft is ever completed during NaNoWriMo (really more of a zero-th draft). Since then the work has been sitting in my Google drive, gathering dust.
Earlier this week on a whim I collated all of the chapters into a single Word document, did a quick round of formatting, and had the draft printed and spiral-bound at Kinko’s. At a little over 54,000 words, and printed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, with 1.5 line spacing, it comes in at 120 pages.
Even if I don’t do anything with the manuscript, it sure feels good to see it in printed form.
Subject: Cyborgs, Precursors
Setting: Bar
Genre: Magic Realism
Midnight Star, “Freak-A-Zoid”, from their 1983 album No Parking on the Dance Floor. I was a freshman in high school when I first heard this song. I wish I appreciated it as much back then as I do now.