Author: Sysadmin

On a pop music player and some quotes

It’s kind of strange to see pop music players getting older because we tend to to think of pop as an experience of youth both as performers and audience.  But I still like pop, and some performers of it like Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen have kept it up until later age.

This is from a The Irish Times about the guitarist/singer Johnny Marr, who is probably best known for being the lead guitarist for The Smiths in the 1980s, which was one of the most popular bands for depressed and sensitive teenagers at the time:

On a novel and two original poems/jokes

Picked up a novel a few months ago called Hunter’s Moon: A Novel in Stories. It was published in 2019 by prolific author Philip Caputo. I was going through a “retail therapy” stage and other weirdness at the time last year when I bought it. I still haven’t read it fully yet but mean to.

It seems to use the same technique as Jerzy Kosinski had of writing fictional vignettes that can hang together into a full novel.

Here is a critical  comment atop the front cover of Hunter’s Moon:

“Set in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, these linked stories deftly probe the psychic wounds of men with lost jobs, bruised egos, and failed expectations: an unflinching reality check on the failed state of middle-age manhood today.” — The New York Times Book Review

Some thoughts. I like hiking in the country but am not comfortable with guns so don’t hunt. I think Caputo chose an interesting topic after all that Michigan went through since the mid-20th century with the problems of the Detroit auto industry competing with foreign-based competitors.

My dissertation advisor and teacher said Modernism in literature is about fragmentation. I think it suits modern preference for short passages and vignettes, rather than long narratives that require longer attention spans. For better or worse.

“Mean” by yours truly

What does the buddy’s silence mean?

What? Was that an inappropriate question?

“Only” by yours truly

“Sir, you’re the only one who thinks you are funny.”

“That’s okay for jokes still make it more sunny. ”

“But the jokes won’t make you money, and you have still been too punny!”

“Party of one. Still can be fun.”

On a Dickinson poem

This is one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson because I think it explains a feminine attitude to men: favoring subtleness, obliqueness, and all.

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

On a newspaper article and two original poems

From The Washington Post recently:

On a movie

I don’t like a lot of Adam Sandler’s comedies but liked The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, and the one watched the past two days a lot. The latest one was called Anger Management.

To me it is about a man played by Sandler who seems to be being assailed by his community, then gets angry and punished by a judge for it, and forced into therapy with a doctor played by Jack Nicholson.

Some interesting lines from the film:

“I thought you were joking.”

“No, the serious part was the joke.”

When after visiting a Buddhist monastery…

“You kicked some serious monk ass back there!”

The movie ends happily with Sandler’s character marrying his love interest. While I don’t like some of his work, he can be funny IMO in this movie by having the main character having a full-time job of making coats and caps for overweight cats.

One of the movie critics said it had an interesting premise but did not really follow through. I don’t agree. A lot of people have anger issues and try to turn to comedy to vent it. It is better than violence, even if people can be offended by the attempts at humor.

On an article and two original poems

From the recent review in The Irish Times about a critical book on American literature.

The review is mixed, positive and negative. It mentions Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. The main thing I remember about that novel is Finn saying sometimes you have to reject your society, or at least some of it, for the sake of friendship and humanity.

“’Books keep the evidence so readers might find it tomorrow,’ writes Ilan Stavans, a professor of cultural studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts. It’s a nice way of expressing the nature of literature as a permanent record, from the first written word to today, when physical books – where the reader owns the words and doesn’t just have a licence to read them as long as Amazon allows it – have remained stubbornly popular.”

There is a saying that literature is “history that stays history,” or something to that effect. I think it was from Ezra Pound. I think it comes down to treating literature like myth and psychology.

“Zones” by yours truly

Time zones

Pheromones

Awkward talk on phones

Alone(s}, alone(s}

Intimacy, moans

Retiring and loans.

“Define” by yours truly

“What do you think of the ‘Nay, dohh!’ position in Western Europe?”

“As I define it, it should not be tore up. But they should not get too angry.”

Just a few poems and remarks on a new novel started

“Solipsisim” by yours truly

“The world is what you make of it,” said the solipsist.

“Voice” by yours truly

Don’t trust or respect me?

But here’s my voice (no choice).

Freedom of each:

First ahh men didn’t.

“Barking” by yours truly

Barking dogs

Catalogues

Travel logs

Stuck in bogs

Wheels and cogs

Very loud cars

Times in bars

Venus and Mars

Bridges to far(s)

Life too sparse.

“Counter” by yours truly

Counterintuitive

Meet counterfactual.

Might be a good couple,

And have a happy nuptial.

On another matter…

Have started a planned new novel. It would be about a second chance for a rather older man. What do you do with what’s left of your life, if the pursuits of your young life did not go well? It might be finished by summer or autumn. I only write about 500 words a day even when I have momentum.

On a news article and a movie

These are the first two paragraphs from a cover story in The Washington Post today:

“When the families of nine of the victims of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School began their lawsuit against the gunmaker of Bushmaster AR-15 style rifle, they were driven by the goal of sparing other families the pain that had upended their lives.

On the Super Bowl and Winter Olympics

-Watched about half of the Super Bowl 56 yesterday. I don’t usually watch sports, but this is a cultural event each year.

-Slightly favored L.A. because I have been there a few times and love movies. So I am glad they won. The athleticism and coordination between quarterbacks and pass receivers and running backs is still interesting.

-The knee injury of one player disturbed me. It is a violent sport. In high school, a company tried to sell all football players knee-protecting devices. I was never good at U.S. football so just quit and joined “lone-wolf” sports. There was also a really disturbing video at the time of Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann getting hit so hard in a sack that it basically crippled his leg.

-I had a grad school classmate who said she would never let her son play U.S. football because it was so violent. There was also a scene in the Tarantino movie Django Unchained with two men beating each other up while other men watched it as entertainment. It reminded me a bit of U.S. football games.

Also watched a few minutes of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, downhill skiing and ski jumps.  You must have very strong nerves and good coordination for it. One of the skiers was named Eileen Goo. Sounds like a made-up name… I like goo or I like you.

It was also interesting to see the nuclear power silos in the distance beyond the ski slopes. I’m not opposed to nuclear power and had seen some nuclear facilities skiing myself when younger in the Northeast U.S.

On a movie

Watched Deepwater Horizon for the first time last night and have some thoughts…

1. I began my white-collar career covering the oil/gas industry as a reporter, including the new technology of deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
2. Some in the oil industry were passionate at the time about finding more domestic petroleum to avoid U.S. reliance on foreign countries for it. They were right in a way, because I think petroleum economics, in addition to other things, led to the 9/11 terrorism.
3. Semi-submersible technology was pretty new when the rig blew up in 2010, and the rig was built in an Asian country that had almost no oil business. It basically means drilling a hole in the sea floor without the rig being securely put on the ground; it can be dangerous.
4. The movie demonstrates the tensions that can happen between a controlling company like BP (the recent CEO of the corporation resigned in scandal) and a contracting company. One of the contracting drillers says, “we’re just the help to drill a hole.”
5. Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell are two of the better action actors in Hollywood, and the visuals of an exploding rig are pretty good in this movie.
6. In reality, 11 people died on the rig in the explosion, and it caused a lot of environmental pollution in the Gulf area, although local businesses may have overdone the damage.