"Didn't you hear about me, Gabe? If I'd been a ranch, they would've named me "The Bar Nothing"." Rita Hayworth, Gilda (1946)
It has been a singularly dull week in the news. Oh sure, weird weather patterns, chains of earthquakes in Indonesia, lovingly-tended-corpse stories from Germany and Austria (it's a thing there, don't ask me why), more death and destruction in Iraqhanistan, on and on and on and it never stops. Which is why it is called news, I suppose, but it certainly misses the point that news is supposed to be new. Is it not? On the "local" front, M. le Président Sarkozy is busily pissing off most of the European bureaucrats & politicians with his ". . . but the Emperor is naked !" statements, such as why is the ECB (European Central Bank) catering to speculators instead of investors (they REALLY did not like that one), etc. I still believe he is a demagogue with fascist tendencies ("Don't worry, dear, it's just a phase, he'll grow out of it"), but I must admit that despite a presidential style that cries out for some baroque apotheosizing fanfare by Lully (like Louis XIV and Napoleon, Sarkozy is a very short man with an imperial-sized ego; whether his calves are as well-formed and he dances as well is open to question), he does at least move, let the critics be damned, and wishes France to get off her derrière and DO something with herself, preferably not alone with a marital aide. On verra. Like Gilda in the eponymous film, standing still and just waiting to react is not his style, but he will give it a chance before he moves to Montevideo, gets a job singing in a nightclub and starts divorce proceedings.
On the personal good news front, I was able to reestablish contact with my niece, Adrienne, who lives, works and studies in the USA (her picture is in the column at left). We had drifted apart over the last few years; I moved to France and she is very busy with her chock-full life in America, so the drift was natural, but it is good to be back in contact. I brought her to France once, when she was nine years old, and soon after that she chose Spanish as her language elective, showing, I suppose, that France was all fine and well but really, Uncle, Spanish is more useful. It may have been the visit to Versailles that turned it for her; after the full tour and the dazzling wonders of the place, her one remark was, "No wonder they had a revolution." Out of the mouths of babes. She is a wonderful adult person now (she was a wonderful child, too) and I look forward to communicating with her.
Balin Mundson: "Gilda, are you decent?"
Gilda: "Me? Sure, I'm decent."
I have had two trains of thought predominate this week. The first is the worldwide acceptance of the idea that the computer somehow renders its users anonymous and thus hidden. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course - our computer personæ are full-fledged extensions of ourselves and, as such, can be read as easily by someone with a trained eye as we can be read by (competent) psychologists and psychiatrists. The 'Age of Anonymity' is l-o-n-g gone in the silicone Sargasso Sea of the Internet. We are, perhaps, even more honest about who we are in our various electronic avatars than we would ever dream of being in real life. Take a look at any e-being anywhere you find one (blogs, profiles, virtuals, social networks, etc.) and tell me that you do not get an immediate impression of who that person is and, more importantly, you are fairly sure that you are spot-on about that impression. And no, people do not always put their "best side" out there, we all know that, the Web is not inhabited solely by gleaming goody-two-shoes but by an astonishing array of personalities running the gamut from shoot-them-now psychotic to cloyingly unreal. The Web is amoral. It has no voice of its own, we are its voice, and making the Web your buddy, your partner or your god is as fructifying as masturbation in an interstellar void. "The 1950s lasted a thousand years," according to Neil Gaiman, but things have caught up with a vengeance and those in my age group (the Ferrous Fifties) take it in stride but remember the Dark Ages (Eisenhower), transistor tubes and Flower Power (don't ask, just thank your E-dealer). I love the age we live in but that does not mean that I am not mindful of what has been lost. No, do not worry, I am not going to sing the "In My Day. . ." blues, it was not all that great then anyway, trust me on that. I do not miss anything about that era other than cheap food bills and boundless optimism.
Gilda: "Its stopped raining. Maybe that means something."
Johnny: "You still haven't got over being superstitious. Come on."
The second train of thought has been about recurring dreams. I have one from time to time that involves being aboard a 1950s spaceship that is making a kind of Star Trek-like voyage of exploration plus trading mission to various locales (look at the 'summer job' photo on the left). The crew personnel fluctuate from dream to dream but I am always the "counselor" who is responsible for smooth crew relations and dealing with the "natives". I wonder what it is about certain dream setups that make them useful as repetitive templates to work out our thoughts and feelings, why some of them lend themselves so easily to being templates in the first place. Yes, I have read Jung and know about archetypes, but it is not that, it is rather the consistent need of the mind to place itself in a situation which aptly fits its needs of the moment.
The only other recurring dream of note that I can recall (publicly) is from my childhood: giant spiders landed from space, wreaked general havoc on my hometown and eventually ripped the roof off of our house, reached inside and promptly devoured my parents (I had seen 1955's Tarantula, which deeply impressed me). Fairly easy, that one, eh? Decades later, when I saw South Park #608, "Red Hot Catholic Love", I laughed myself sick. If you do not understand the reference, do try and watch the episode, it is priceless. Giant spiders have their uses everywhere, it seems.
Johnny: "Statistics prove there are more women in the world than anything else, except insects."
Gilda: "On that charming observation, I shall go and change for breakfast."
I have another train of thought that I wish to pursue, but as it is on another theme entirely, I shall wait to expound on it at a later date (that is so much easier in French, j'attends pour m'en expliquer). I shall say, however, that we all need to get a grip on our cheap selves when we look at ourselves and the scale of what we call reality. In the meantime, I shall do some research and fact gathering and present the theme in the near future. Oh my, the ship is here, it is time to depart for the next planet. Thank you for doing business with us, please leave a carved monolith so your great-grandchildren recognize us when we swing back by this way.
Leducdor
It has been a singularly dull week in the news. Oh sure, weird weather patterns, chains of earthquakes in Indonesia, lovingly-tended-corpse stories from Germany and Austria (it's a thing there, don't ask me why), more death and destruction in Iraqhanistan, on and on and on and it never stops. Which is why it is called news, I suppose, but it certainly misses the point that news is supposed to be new. Is it not? On the "local" front, M. le Président Sarkozy is busily pissing off most of the European bureaucrats & politicians with his ". . . but the Emperor is naked !" statements, such as why is the ECB (European Central Bank) catering to speculators instead of investors (they REALLY did not like that one), etc. I still believe he is a demagogue with fascist tendencies ("Don't worry, dear, it's just a phase, he'll grow out of it"), but I must admit that despite a presidential style that cries out for some baroque apotheosizing fanfare by Lully (like Louis XIV and Napoleon, Sarkozy is a very short man with an imperial-sized ego; whether his calves are as well-formed and he dances as well is open to question), he does at least move, let the critics be damned, and wishes France to get off her derrière and DO something with herself, preferably not alone with a marital aide. On verra. Like Gilda in the eponymous film, standing still and just waiting to react is not his style, but he will give it a chance before he moves to Montevideo, gets a job singing in a nightclub and starts divorce proceedings.
On the personal good news front, I was able to reestablish contact with my niece, Adrienne, who lives, works and studies in the USA (her picture is in the column at left). We had drifted apart over the last few years; I moved to France and she is very busy with her chock-full life in America, so the drift was natural, but it is good to be back in contact. I brought her to France once, when she was nine years old, and soon after that she chose Spanish as her language elective, showing, I suppose, that France was all fine and well but really, Uncle, Spanish is more useful. It may have been the visit to Versailles that turned it for her; after the full tour and the dazzling wonders of the place, her one remark was, "No wonder they had a revolution." Out of the mouths of babes. She is a wonderful adult person now (she was a wonderful child, too) and I look forward to communicating with her.
Balin Mundson: "Gilda, are you decent?"
Gilda: "Me? Sure, I'm decent."
I have had two trains of thought predominate this week. The first is the worldwide acceptance of the idea that the computer somehow renders its users anonymous and thus hidden. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course - our computer personæ are full-fledged extensions of ourselves and, as such, can be read as easily by someone with a trained eye as we can be read by (competent) psychologists and psychiatrists. The 'Age of Anonymity' is l-o-n-g gone in the silicone Sargasso Sea of the Internet. We are, perhaps, even more honest about who we are in our various electronic avatars than we would ever dream of being in real life. Take a look at any e-being anywhere you find one (blogs, profiles, virtuals, social networks, etc.) and tell me that you do not get an immediate impression of who that person is and, more importantly, you are fairly sure that you are spot-on about that impression. And no, people do not always put their "best side" out there, we all know that, the Web is not inhabited solely by gleaming goody-two-shoes but by an astonishing array of personalities running the gamut from shoot-them-now psychotic to cloyingly unreal. The Web is amoral. It has no voice of its own, we are its voice, and making the Web your buddy, your partner or your god is as fructifying as masturbation in an interstellar void. "The 1950s lasted a thousand years," according to Neil Gaiman, but things have caught up with a vengeance and those in my age group (the Ferrous Fifties) take it in stride but remember the Dark Ages (Eisenhower), transistor tubes and Flower Power (don't ask, just thank your E-dealer). I love the age we live in but that does not mean that I am not mindful of what has been lost. No, do not worry, I am not going to sing the "In My Day. . ." blues, it was not all that great then anyway, trust me on that. I do not miss anything about that era other than cheap food bills and boundless optimism.
Gilda: "Its stopped raining. Maybe that means something."
Johnny: "You still haven't got over being superstitious. Come on."
The second train of thought has been about recurring dreams. I have one from time to time that involves being aboard a 1950s spaceship that is making a kind of Star Trek-like voyage of exploration plus trading mission to various locales (look at the 'summer job' photo on the left). The crew personnel fluctuate from dream to dream but I am always the "counselor" who is responsible for smooth crew relations and dealing with the "natives". I wonder what it is about certain dream setups that make them useful as repetitive templates to work out our thoughts and feelings, why some of them lend themselves so easily to being templates in the first place. Yes, I have read Jung and know about archetypes, but it is not that, it is rather the consistent need of the mind to place itself in a situation which aptly fits its needs of the moment.
The only other recurring dream of note that I can recall (publicly) is from my childhood: giant spiders landed from space, wreaked general havoc on my hometown and eventually ripped the roof off of our house, reached inside and promptly devoured my parents (I had seen 1955's Tarantula, which deeply impressed me). Fairly easy, that one, eh? Decades later, when I saw South Park #608, "Red Hot Catholic Love", I laughed myself sick. If you do not understand the reference, do try and watch the episode, it is priceless. Giant spiders have their uses everywhere, it seems.Johnny: "Statistics prove there are more women in the world than anything else, except insects."
Gilda: "On that charming observation, I shall go and change for breakfast."
I have another train of thought that I wish to pursue, but as it is on another theme entirely, I shall wait to expound on it at a later date (that is so much easier in French, j'attends pour m'en expliquer). I shall say, however, that we all need to get a grip on our cheap selves when we look at ourselves and the scale of what we call reality. In the meantime, I shall do some research and fact gathering and present the theme in the near future. Oh my, the ship is here, it is time to depart for the next planet. Thank you for doing business with us, please leave a carved monolith so your great-grandchildren recognize us when we swing back by this way.
Leducdor
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