Category: Uncategorized

From The Wall Street Journal 

Alec Baldwin is hardly alone. How does someone go on with life after unintentionally killing someone?

On a recent novel called The Searcher by the Irish writer Tana French

I have not read it yet, but it appears to be about a long-time Chicago police officer who retires to rural Ireland. He meets a boy whose brother has gone missing, and the police don’t care. From the book flap: “Against his will, he discovers that even in the most idyllic small town, secrets are hidden, people aren’t always what they seem, and trouble can come calling at his door.”

This is an interesting for me now because police indifference or even brutality and torture was a very personal experience recently. I have a fictional novel idea but have not really started on it yet.

It has to with the binary between passive and self-destructive addiction and moral action in a cruel and sometimes violent world.

On Irish politics/history

My main educational background is in Irish literature (and some even question that. Haha).; But this article interested me because I lived in the UK for almost three years in total. I never fully understood the dynamic between England and Ireland in political terms. An English friend compared it to the dynamic between the US and Canada because one has a lot of power and the other is sparsely populated, environmentally beautiful, and artistic.

Here is a paragraph from the recent The Irish Times article by John FitzGerald that sparked this post:

“By 2023 UK output is likely to be under 3 per cent higher than in 2019. While the numbers suggest Brexit has had a serious negative impact on the UK economy, and that this impact will continue to grow for a number of years, Covid may end up taking most of the blame.”

In college, I wrote an  essay for the school newspaper about how the UK might not fit into the EU because I noticed cultural differences there during my junior year abroad in London. I could be out of my depths on this; politics is not really my thing.

 

On two more pop songs

“Living in a Land Down Under” by Men at Work:

“Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder.”

The words  get a bit more crude later, but this was one of my favorite pop groups in the 1980s. They had a really positive energy. I have never been to Australia but like a lot of their music and movies.

“Somebody that I Used to Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra

This was one of the better pop songs in the past few years, and it has a nice video on YouTube. It is also by Australian artists, both male and female singers. It deals with a romantic break-up. If you are interested in the issue, I think the song “Dammit” by the post-punk US band Blink 182 also deals with the situation well.

From the Blink 182 song that they seem to play at each of their concerts:

“Well I guess this is growing up
Well I guess this is growing up”

Just on music today because a bit tired of politics and family dispute

On “Just Waiting on a Friend” by The Rolling Stones”: this is one of my favorite pop songs.  Mick Jagger advises against sexual or substance addiction and just relying on friends. I have always preferred this pop band to The Beatles. Jagger seemed to know how to know how to be part of counter-culture without dying young like Lennon or Bowie. I think Jagger was well-educated and a good business person. I don’t know what has kept Keith Richards going; he must have a strong constitution.

More on “Russians” by The Police. I think this is one of the pop songs that helped defuse international political/military conflict like some of The Doors during the Vietnam War. I may over-estimate art’s effect on politics though. Sting is probably more wealthy than he deserves, but he is a very good writer, singer, and musician, and this a capitalist economy.

“There was this rhetoric that said of me: I’m fixed; I’m cured. I think that’s an American thing, where they like to tie everything up in the Hollywood ending.”

— Alan Cummings The Irish Times recently

One of my best friends overseas turned out to  be gay. I may have been stupid about it but believe many homosexuals are in great pain and don’t believe they usually want to hurt other people at all. I think it is difficult because men can be friends for a while for real but then have to leave each other because one wants to be gay with the other.

Two poems

“Midnight” by yours truly

Midnight

Unquiet

Quite a riot

Just might fight it.

“Never” by yours truly

You were never born!

Perhaps our ties should be shorn.

You should not have watched porn.

This is sworn.

On a pop song  and a forgotten poem

Recently watched and heard a cover version of “How Soon is Now” by Johnny Marr, who was the guitarist for the song in the 1980s for The Smiths. It is on YouTube, and was apparently done about a week ago.

His voice is good, and I think he is a great guitarist, even though Morrissey deserves the credits for the words and original singing. I have posted on social media that in my opinion this was one of the best pop songs in the 1980s. I heard it first in my teenage years at a friend’s house who had a good sound system. It had an almost physical effect on me.

Apparently. the band had an amicable break-up after a prolific time of about two years. Some famous bands don’t end well and even get into legal problems. Morrisey is an interesting poet.. He is apparently gay but kept discreet about it.  His writing appealed to many depressed adolescents at the time.

I had the idea for a brief poem but forgot it. There are two problems with brief poems: you can forget them really easily, and they can seem silly or bitter. Sometimes it is better to forget them.

 

More on Doom a few random comments and a joke

This is from a very long paragraph from Niall Ferguson’s new book, but it references a lot of literature. I have a few comments on it.

“As the example of Submission suggests, science fiction is as much concerned with political catastrophe as with the natural or technological variety,  A recurrent dystopia since the 1930s  has been that of a fascist America.  This fear has persisted from Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here (1935) to Susan Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008), by way of Stephen King’s The Running Man (1982), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaiden’s Tale (1985)…”

This is  not the whole paragraph, but you get the gist of it. Ferguson also mentions other fiction about dystopia, including most importantly 1984.  There is something sadly interesting because it does sometimes feel like the world is “going to hell in a handbasket,” as my Dad once said.

A joke:

Karmageddon: it’s the end of the world.

On an The Irish Times article about the virus lockdown. Here is the first paragraph:

“Nobody enjoyed the restrictions of lockdown, nor felt at peace with the virulent disease that prompted it, but it is undeniable that some people – whether because of temperament, circumstance or both – found it easier to adapt to than others. Novelist Sarah Moss was firmly among those for whom it felt horribly imprisoning, to the point where it made her “trapped and panicky”, particularly during the period of lockdown in the UK when outdoor exercise was only permitted for an hour a day; she is someone for whom the outside – and her regular practice of cycling, running, climbing – is central to sustaining a sense of wellbeing, and even, perhaps, the imaginative and creative powers that she brings to storytelling.”

The journalist goes on to interview Moss through an article.  I was personally hurt by the travel lockdown and other issues recently, so this interests me.

I think the main issue is whether authorities, whether governmental or medical, can over-react and do more damage than good. My own relatives say everyone is getting tired of hearing about this topic from me, but so what? Freedom of speech and truth.

On Ken Follett’s new novel, I don’t really like apocalyptic literature, but Follett deals with interesting historical topics.

From a The Washington Post review of the novel:

“Just as they did in the days and months preceding the First World War, a variety of circumstances come together to create the conditions for a global catastrophe. “Never” is a cautionary tale about the power of unintended consequences, and it is disturbing and illuminating in equal measure. Follett has always been an accomplished storyteller, but his latest reflects a sense of urgency that lifts it well above typical apocalyptic thrillers. “Never” is first-rate entertainment that has something important to say. It deserves the popular success it will almost certainly achieve.”

My initial opinion when there was a lot of concern in the US about North Korea’s nuclear weapons was that they would self-destruct by ever using them because the US has so much nuclear weaponry it could use in response. Someone made the point though that North Korea could share nuclear weapons with suicidal terrorists who might actually use them.

In the Cold War, there was the concept of mutual assured destruction, meaning the US and the Soviet Union were unlikely to use their nuclear weapons if one country started to because both would likely be largely destroyed, The Police pop song “Russians” seemed to reflect this idea.