Author: Sysadmin

On masculinity and morality

More from Guyland toward the end of the book (page 387):

“In the end we have to develop a new  model of masculinity. Young men must understand on a deep level that being a real man isn’t going along with what you know in your heart to be cruel, inhumane, stupid, humiliating, and dangerous.”

A few thoughts:

This brings to mind a very disturbing scene in Leaving Las Vegas where one of the main characters, who is a prostitute, is with a group of young men in a  hotel room. One of the men is very shy and gets egged on by his friends who cheer as he sexually assaults her.

The novel I plan to publish this year has to do with a narrator who has been in sort of addicted fetal position for a long time but has to take action because of an intense situation. Righteous action trumping passive addiction.

“Passivity” is an odd word. Often it is a good thing: calmness, meditation, gentleness. But it can also involve sins of omission: passing by a dying homeless person on the sidewalk or Nazi soldiers  who said they were only following orders.

 

On three Irish plays in the new year

These are three entries (and some comments) from a review of more by The Irish Times:

“Walking with Ghosts
Gaiety Theatre – January 27th-February 6th, 2022, gaietytheatre.ie
World premiere of this adaptation of Gabriel Byrne’s best-selling memoir of the same name, directed by Emmy award-winning director Lonny Price. Moving between sensual recollection of childhood in a now almost vanished Ireland and a commentary on stardom in Hollywood and on Broadway, Byrne returns to his home town to reflect on a life’s journey.”

Byrne is one of my favorite actors in that he can do drama, comedy, and action well. One of my most distinct memories of a film is him playing someone involved in the mafia in Miller’s Crossing (1990) and taking an opponent to the woods. When compelled by the opponent to “have a heart” and show mercy, he says, “What heart?” and kills with his pistol.

“An Evening With Reggie
Everyman, Cork – March 31st-April 16th, 2022, everymancork.com
You may not have heard of the journalist and writer Pat Fitzpatrick, but if you are from Cork you will most certainly have heard of his alter ego, Reggie from Blackrock Road, a millionaire with an acid tongue ready to burn anyone who doesn’t meet his standards. What began as a satirical online column is being shaped into a play with the assistance of director Pat Kiernan. Some of Reggie’s humour is local, but many of Reggie’s targets are not. Not the worst way to spend an evening, Reggie himself might say.”

I have not read Fitzpatrick’s work, but the summary reminds me of a brief U.S. series of TV shows about a decade ago I saw a few episodes of and thought were funny. It was called Running Wilde about an aristocrat who doesn’t really have to work and has a wicked tongue. The literary critic Declan Kiberd noted that in Ireland the very wealthy considered it mundane and somewhat shameful to have a formal job. At a grad school, end-of-year party, a classmate said of another student who said online he couldn’t make it because he needed to work, “You’d admit that?”

“Endgame
Gate Theatre, Dublin – February 11-March 26, 2022, gatetheatre.ie
Samuel Beckett gets the celebrity treatment in this highly anticipated production of Endgame, which stars controversial comedian Frankie Boyle, making his stage debut as the hot-tempered Hamm, and Robert Sheehan as his lackey Clov. Seán McGinley and Gina Moxley join the duo as the dustbin-stuck Nag and Nell, under the direction of Broadway director Danya Taylor.”

I think this was one of Beckett’s more difficult works, but some find all of his writing weird. The setting is claustrophobic and somewhat apocalyptic, but it has a certain amount of humor, like the comments, “What do you think of the life to come?” followed by an interlocutor’s answer, “Mine was always that.”

 

Happy New Year. I am not socially taking part in the holiday this time, but one of my best memories is of a New Year’s celebration in adult youth.

Sometimes I read The Washington Post still but to be honest not their main news. Their culture and literature writers are still often good.

Here is the first paragraph of Maureen Corrigan’s review of a new novel:

“The Latinist is ingenious in its sinister simplicity. In the opening pages of Mark in Prins’s novel, Tessa Templeton, a Ph.D. candidate in classics at Oxford, discovers that her mentor has written a recommendation letter that damns her with faint praise, torpedoing her chances of securing an academic job. His motive? Obsession. Professor Christopher Eccles wants to keep Tessa close to him, toiling as an adjunct. He’s the ultimate Professor of Desire.”

A few comments. I recently moved to part of the U.S. where many are Latino or Latina and speak Spanish reflexively,  I barely speak it at all and may be too old and stupid to ever really learn it. But it is odd because I studied ancient Latin for four years in high school, so there should be a basis in root words to learn modern Spanish.

Also, the review mentions the potential awkwardness of recommendation letters. I have graduate degrees and tried for a few years to get a full-time job in universities (temporary successes but nothing that lasted). College teaching jobs always ask for recommendation letters, but the letters are usually confidential to the requester, whether from former bosses or teachers. So they may indeed be “damning you with faint praise.”

On  quitting and an  original poem

From a The Wall Street Journal article:

“I played for the rest of college, even becoming a two-time Academic All-American athlete, but I gave up on the idea of ever playing professionally. This was an agonizing decision that went against my upbringing. But I’m lucky I quit, because I found another calling, one that I did turn out to have an above-the-curve talent for: economics. Decades later, my work as an economist has convinced me that good old Vince [Lombardi]: (‘winners never quit, and quitters never win’) got it wrong. People don’t quit enough.”

This reminds me of the Romantic poet John Keats’ concept of “negative capability,’ letting go of your passions and interests when they are not working out. I was once told when younger that I tried too hard. My older and wiser brother has a saying that he chooses his battles. Sometimes I stick too much to my guns.

In a social-media quote earlier this year after a very difficult few months, I said I was going to try to calm down and keep quiet. It has to do with obsession. W.B. Yeats in a poem wrote of “Hearts with one purpose alone   / Through summer and winter seem   / Enchanted to a stone / To trouble the living stream.”

A poem

“Pun-(ch)” by yours truly

“I’m thirsty. Where is the pun-ch?!”

“Remember: the past is perfect. Know that much. And don’t let a buddy steal your lunch.”

“This has been fun but maybe too mu(n)ch”

On James Bond and an original poem

Read a The Irish Times article about the Bond movie franchise. I was a bit surprised when younger that it continued so strongly after the Cold War because the first few movies seemed to be largely about that.

I think the enduring appeal of Bond is that he is supremely able to take control of difficult situations and of course his romances with attractive women too (there is a funny old SNL skit about him seeing  a medical doctor who reports he has many venereal  diseases from his multiple paramours). And some people are so evil they should die, if only in a fictional context.

I have not seen the latest Bond movie with Daniel Craig, but the article discloses something about it that indicates it would be impossible to continue the narrative logically, at least with Craig as the actor. The news article speculates the new Bond could be Tom Hardy, Henry Cavill, or Idris Elba. There has even been talk of a female Bond, but I don’t think that would work. My money’s on Cavill.

A poem

“Heavy Mettle” by yours truly

“Try heavy mettle (music).”

“Is that all you have to peddle?”

“Let’s just settle.”

“This is a fine fettle.”

…

“Going to the gym and sweat away all my calories.”

“Gees. Must take a lot of mettle? Dress warmly. Don’t freeze.”

“Yes, the metal weights can be as much as 45 pounds.”

“That resounds. Careful: you could hit your head, then be dead.”

“Enough said, Ed. Don’t like this dread.”

 

 

Another Charles Krauthammer essay and two joke/poems

“Garbage in, garbage out. Or GIGO as an acronym.” Most of us have heard this before, whether it is about nutrition or information taken in.

Reading one of Krauthammer’s 2002 essays from The Washington Post, “When Modern Medicine Fails,” part of the posthumous book collected by his son, The Point of It All, The essay deals with nutrition and the way trends in what is healthy can change, starting with a joking reference to Woody Allen’s sci-fi comedy Sleeper in which it is proposed marijuana is good for you (Allen had a joke to the effect that people taught him as a child that milk was actually good for you) and then considering if eggs and tobacco can also be healthy.

In the British play and film The Lost Weekend, the lead character says booze is medicine for him. I suppose many would say that is alcoholic self-justification. You have to be careful with any substance, legal or illegal .. or even formally medicated by licensed doctors.

While marijuana pure seems to be dangerous to some people (like schizophrenics), CBD products seem to have been widely accepted now as an over-the-counter, anti-anxiety treatment.

I am not a medical doctor and have put a lot of c–p in my body’s digestive system. I call a lot of what I eat still “bachelor food,” canned or frozen stuff and Coke.

But Krauthammer was a practicing medical doctor before becoming a writer/commentator.

Original joke/poems

“Naps” by yours truly

Micro-naps; don’t collapse.

Cat naps; big hats.

Welcome Matt; Step on the welcome mat.

Don’t like a dog or cat.

Not really any pet met.

(That I ever met).

“Just” by yours truly

It’s Just Lust (Not Only Lunch):

The dating website for busy professionals.

 

On a news column and an original joke/poem

Mick Jagger is one of the more interesting pop singers to me. He took part in the counter-culture but did not die young. From a light-hearted column recently in The Wall Street Journal:

“Before portable storage devices arrived on the scene, the Stones released ‘Under My Thumb,’ which could just as easily have been called ‘Under My Thumb Drive.’ And all the way back in 1965, the Stones, with Nostradamus-like prescience, released ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ warning investors that once Microsoft entered cloud computing in a big way, smaller rivals would be wiped off the face of the earth.”

Queenan’s article appears deliberately silly, but I think Jagger deserves respect for being both a rocker and a good business man. “Waiting on a Friend” is one of my favorite pop songs and seems to have good morals.

A poem

“Sn(w)eak” by yours truly

Fun-day

Shmooze-day

Spends-day

S’mores-day

Fly-day

What-does-it-matter-day

Pun-day

New sneak

Just some thoughts on a recent news column, Christmas, and a silly original poem

The first is a response from a recent Fintan O’Toole column on The Irish Times that is a kind of compiling what happened in the past year (I have usually liked his writing but not lately} that usually happens on newspaper publications this time of year:

“We were supposed to be emerging from the long night of the Covid pandemic, showing our faces to the sun, unmasked and blissful with relief and gratitude. We thought by now we would no longer be a nation of amateur actuaries, doing daily risk assessments in our heads.

Yet here we are still steeped in anxiety, caution and uncertainty – another year older and deeper in weariness and frustration.”

Well, stop calling Covid a pandemic. It is not. Please stop lying. Just because authorities like the CDC and NIH tell you something, it does not make it true. Trust me: authorities can present clear falsehoods and refuse to acknowledge it, and then torture you if you disagree with them with impunity on their part.

In the sermon today, the pastor reminded people there are actually 12 days of Christmas, until January 6, not just one.  He noted the importance of naming a child and parental authority and providing a good example to the child.

I wonder if one of the appeals of the Christmas season is the idea of birth writ large, even in the form of vegetative life like Christmas trees with lights (which I guess are actually dead, ironically, by the point they are cut down and used for decoration).

“Weak” by yours truly

Pun-day,

Booze-day,

Friends-day,

Slurs-day,

Cry-day,

Matter-day or Flatter-day?,

One-day?

New weak.

Merry Christmas, whatever your persuasion in faith

One British intellectual, I think it was the English novelist and commentator Will Self, said it is possible to have a “bicameral” mind about religion, both believing and not entirely believing.

Even if you are atheist, you can appreciate the birth of a child who turns out to be a good man.

On a movie sequel

Just read a review in The Wall Street Journal of the latest sequel of The Matrix (I don’t think I will see it; for some reason have lost my interest in movies lately),

From the review:

“Yet the original trilogy, and especially the first film, wasn’t a classic anything. It was a pop-culture landmark—a new perspective on life in the age of the internet; an exhortation to self-improving awakeness, as distinct from subsequent wokeness; and, not incidentally, a stunning piece of filmmaking with innovative graphics, elegant action and distinctive fashion. “The Matrix Resurrections” is a recycling dump of murky effects, indifferent action and a crazily cluttered, relentlessly repetitive narrative. It’s “Groundhog Day” in cyberpunk”

I don’t entirely agree. I think the first movie was excellent; the sequels seemed like mediocre action movies. The first movie seemed to be about Neo realizing that even though his environment is hostile at first, he can take control, and it doesn’t have to be. It is a lesson many people have to learn in real life.