It’s here.
http://feedity.com/lileks-com/UFVXVFpR.rss
In case you still haven’t bookmarked the new site, well, hello! Here I am in your RSS feed. Tuesday’s entry is here.
A reminder: if you only accessed this site because it popped up in your RSS feed and you’ve forgotten about it (sniff), it’s just moved:
lileks.com/bleats
The reason, in case you missed it, is simple: I wanted to have more personal control over the design of the site. More than I could get from WP templates, anyway. I may regret this eventually, and then the nightmare of re-bookmarking repeats itself and everyone rolls their eyes and says MAKE UP YOUR MIND, but for now, it’s over there – back where it was for ten+ years. See you there. Thanks!
. . . or something like that. THE BLEAT HAS MOVED BACK to its old locale. I’ve made good on my threat. I think I’m done with wordpress, or any other form of blogging software. Oh, it’s not that it wasn’t easy; it was. It’s not that I couldn’t make it look clean and simple: obviously, I can. But it just looks like everything else. Maybe I’m just tired of being nagged about installing WordPress 3.2.1.1.1.1.9 or upgrading all ten plugins or logging in every two weeks or wishing I had local copies of everything or this, or that . . .
But I do know I’ve made more work for myself, and I don’t care. Oh, and we’re losing “categories.” Let’s all deal with this together.
The new site – which is the old original URL – has comments, by the way. I’ll leave comments open here in case anyone wants to say farewell or can’t get to the new comments system for whatever reason. Give me a fortnight to shake it all out, and don’t expect brilliance; I had a huge, huge redesign all ready to go, and scrapped it tonight after walking outside and looking at the leaves on the lawn. This meant redoing all the rollover buttons, too.
Didn’t mind a bit. Go HERE.
Twitter went down on Thursday night and my first instinct was to get on Twitter and ask people on Twitter what they were doing to do, now that Twitter was down. It’s become part of the atmosphere. It’s a utility, like electricity and water.
And so ends a very unusual week. By that I mean “bad,” but it could be worse; it can always be worse, until it can’t. Probably be feeling close to 90% by tomorrow; seem to have turned a corner. The saving grace, to continue the parade of cliches – yes, my grace was saved around the corner – was the weather, which was spectacular. To sit in the sun in shorts in October is as rare around here as flip-flops in March. I took some photos, of course, but photos never capture the entire experience of autumn. You can look at a picture of the house in summer and remember it well, but autumn has so many intangibles. Spring has its early heralds – the flowers that pop up when everything else is still dead – but it tends to rise in unison like a great C major chord that takes a month to complete. Autumn disintegrates on an individual basis. There’s a tree in the yard that’s almost completely bare. There’s another that’s almost completely green. The yard is lush. The sprinklers go. But they spatter golden leaves. The sun is hot and strong; the night breeze waves a knife around. In the spring every day leads to the next. In the autumn every day stands alone. It’s like a defeated army that drifts away one man at a time. But I do love it. There are crickets outside right now.
Yesterday? I heard a cicada. This may be the first year I hear the last one.
Something I noticed on my desk Wednesday morning:
I know, I know: THE ROUTER IS ARRANGED INCORRECTLY. I had concluded an hour-long podcast. Apparently I did this while talking. About the only place in my life this week I had some order and sense. It was just a week where random things shot in and made messes. Tonight, for example. I sit down at my computer just as a growl message appears – for those who don’t use it, Growl is a system-wide notification program that tells when things happen, or have happened. A download is completed. Tweets were added. New photos in Instagram, or files changed in your Dropbox. Well. I see it for just a second, and it says “user lock added to your dropbox folder” or something like that.
Eh? Who the hell is user LOCK? Or is this a function, a thing, some level of security protection? I’d just finished installing a security update on the laptop, which is connected to Dropbox, so that’s the most likely situation, but it’s hearing a voice on the radio say “Person Gurbletwix halfway up the stairs, James.” You can’t quite process it immediately. You check the stairs. Nothing there. Were you listening to what they were saying on the radio? Maybe it was a commercial.
When you’re not feeling 100%, life is full of those moments. The margins teem with them. You remember that human perception is a rather subjective state, not an objective reality: at any given moment there are things we cannot hear or see or smell, and we’re used to identifying “reality” based on the parameters of our senses and their conversations with the background scripts running in the big wet potato upstairs. The moment the sliders are moved a few degrees, it’s unnerving.
Aaaand of course feeling ill and waiting to feel worse – it’s going to turn into pneumonia, I’ll have to have an xray, they’ll find something, I’m gone, see ya and thanks for all the fiche – reminds you what Jobs did, him being not much older, and you wonder what the sum total of your own work is. Might that be why I’m writing these books as fast as I can? Time’s Winged Chariot, and all that? Nah. I’m doing them to do them. Besides, I’m a “humorist,” and we’re guaranteed to be run over by aforementioned conveyance; it’s the most perishable thing aside from political commentary . . . yeah. Tastes change, and what was risible in one generation induces mass poker-face two generations hence. I read stuff I thought was brilliant in the seventies, and it seems mannered and empty now. A few examples abide, but most humor loses its flavor. The stuff from magazines in the 50s and pre-counterculture 60s, for example: mild and satisfying at the time, like a good cigarette, but it’s mostly “wry,” and wry goes stale once the common cultural references are lost.
Sorry. Don’t worry. Not in the Slough of Despond, not keeping an eye on the eyes of the Black Dog glinting in the dark outside the door. Fine. Better than at any time this week, really. I just need to finish this damned book, and try to get around the fact that I used the same plot device twice explaining the story at the end. I might be able to get away with it, if I sell it for $3.99 as an ebook.
But I can’t sell it if I don’t finish it. Hope to do so this weekend: wish me luck! New title: Harlot Alley. Okay, I just made that up.
Or maybe Autumn Solitaire.
See you Monday. (new column, scroll down until you see my face or name in COLUMNISTS, here.)
My friend Rob has an excerpt of his recent column on Jobs here, and it’s a reminder that he may have gone gentle into that long night, but he didn’t go gentle into that prototype demonstration. I have the feeling he looked at the early drafts of the Apple.com homepage obit spread – he’d asked for the mockups last year – and threw a bedpan at someone over the picture. What the hell did you use to compress this? The thing Sarah Conner used to kill the Terminator at the end of the first movie? There’s artifacts all over the place.
I read a long big book about Apple many years ago, and it wasn’t exactly pro-Jobs. Woz talked to the author; Jobs didn’t. A perfectionist, a tyrant at times, a guy you dreaded getting into the elevator with because he wore the same damned turtleneck for days on end, that sort of thing. The book ended with his return to the company, and noted that it was a hopeful moment, but it probably wouldn’t save Apple. Its glory days were long past.
No! We said. It’s still the greatest! I remember reading MacAddict in those days, when we rejoiced over every new program (they’re still making them! Yay!) and vowed never to give up, to adopt a rogue mentality, us against the world, and so on. But the machines were ugly. The company’s attempts to come up with a radical new OS had splintered and foundered. What could Jobs do?
Perhaps he did this: he gathered all the engineers together. He said “here’s what we’re going to do.”
He laid out a manilla envelop with 25 sheets of paper inside.
“I want a laptop that’s this thin. No thicker. The processor speed will be ten times as fast as our fastest machine now.”
He took out a deck of cards. Cut them in half.
“I want a mobile phone this thick. It will be operated by touch. It will play music, movies, do email, connect to the internet.”
He took out an Etch-A-Sketch.
“I want a tablet half as thin as this. Like the ones you’ve seen on Star Trek, right? Also touch-operated, and it will do everything the phone will, as well as other things like music composition, video editing, and reading virtual books.”
He patted the big CRT monitor sitting on top a Performa. “We’ll still make computers, but I want the screen to be huge, flat, and oh – no box to sit on. The screen is the computer.”
He took the other half of the playing cards. “I want a personal music player, and it can start out this size. But it should get around to this.” He put down a postage stamp. “Also touch-operated.”
“One more thing. All these devices will talk to each other and share information, and store data in offsite locations that can be accessed anywhere through the air. Everyone else will be there in 15 years. I think we can do it in ten. So work backwards from these ideas, and have your ideas on my desk tomorrow. Start with a new Mac. For God sakes, the ones we have now are just an embarrassment. How about colored plastic?”
It makes sense, doesn’t it? It all seems inevitable in retrospect, but it wasn’t. It took a guy who could see several steps in the future. Beyond this to the thing beyond that.
And now he’s gone to the thing beyond it all. Thanks, Mr. Jobs. Every day: thanks.
I tweeted that it was, for my daughter’s generation, like the death of Walt Disney. Premature, too. The difference, perhaps, was that Walt seemed like a Grandpa when I was growing up; Jobs seemed to be in eternal that-friend’s-cool-dad phase.
At least I picked the right week to be sick; the weather has been spectacular, and there’s nothing like sitting in the sun to made you feel less sodden, as head colds are wont to make you feel. Too grotty to go out beyond the confines of the back yard, although yesterday, in a fit of early-cold enthusiasm (I can beat this! Yes I can!) I got up and drove to St. Louis Park to see if I could rent a cello. Hey, we’ve all had spur-of-the-moment ideas like that. I found the site online, noted that their terms were fair, and figured I could be there before they were open. In the back of my head something said “call first, to see if they actually have a cello,” but I knew if I did that the chains and anchors of the day would start to drape themselves around my shoulders. So I just hit the road.
To my surprise the store was next to the last surviving example of the Glass Tree Bank:
Sorry, I forgot; these things should be run through retro filters:
Midwest Federal put up several of these in the suburbs – there was one by Southdale, one by Rosedale, I know that. Perfect 60s modernistic whimsy, to use two words you don’t see in close proximity together. It’s a lamp store now. The slab out front still bears the sign of the Tree, the Midwest Federal logo that glowed green atop the building downtown most of you know as the Mary Tyler Moore building.
Here’s an old ad from 1960, with the tree fully anthropomorphized:
Anyway, they didn’t have a cello.
So I went back home. Got back on my laptop, checked out other places. There was one. Called it up. They had a cello.
It was ten blocks from the first place I went to. Sigh. See, befogged and cold-clogged; didn’t even think to check other locations on my phone. So I drove there and got a cello. While I signed up I looked at the wall, where there were many photographs of famous musicians. Perlman. Rachmaninoff. Benny. (Jack.)
So you had Rachmaninoff as a customer, eh? I said to the young fellow who took my order. He said he didn’t know. Have to ask the owner, and he’s not in. I figured it was unlikely they had him as a customer, this being the suburbs. Well, the inner-ring, which goes back, but still, I don’t think Serge popped in to St. Louis Park for strings and rosin.
While I was waiting for the order to be finished I looked at the picture of Rachmaninoff.
It was signed. To the owner, I believe.
Stood there feeling a curious sense of wonder: the things you find in the world. The things you never suspected.
Anyway. Drove home and got to work and did things, and later pounded out more novel. Home stretch. Two weeks to completion. Sequel already in my head, and that one may take the title “Skid Row Jack,” because it doesn’t fit this one at all. I’m actually considering “Tangle Town,” since a few key scenes take place in my neighborhood, specifically the Toast Castle up the street.
I’m in the pipe, five by five; novel done by Saturday night.
Sick. Worst is over. Worst came at 3:17 AM, when I woke from a strange dream, covered in the sheen of hallucinatory fever sweat, got out of bed, was struck by the chilly ambient temp of the room, went to get a glass of water, teeth chattering and limbs shaking, figuring: okay, well, dead soon.
Back to sleep. The dreams did not get worse. If the most I can muster during these fevers is a tale of a large indoor BBQ, where I join an electric guitar competition, and one of the judges notes that my playing was cliched, I’m okay. In fact I feel fine! I think I’ll go for a walk!
I could blame the scantness of this on sickness, but I must confess I did something else. A huge burst of novel-writing nailed the penultimate Big Revelation scene. I cannot tell you how happy I am, or how surprised I am, that it all hangs together. Plot-points, timing, motivations – it all works. Novel writing is like going down to the garage and throwing gears and tires and fanbelts in a heap, hoping one day you’ll come down and find a running automobile.
I have a running automobile.
Big link: If you are planning on having horrible fever dreams, this might help them be more toe-tappy. It’s HERE. See you tomorrow. Oh: an essay on the notification of Times Square, HERE.
Oh: new title page.
Hello. I have a cold. This is the bad day where you feel lousy and don’t do anything. Tomorrow will also be that day. Yes, I am gargling with Listerine, taking lots of vitamins and zinc, drinking orange juice, and avoiding over-the-counter medication entirely except for the nasal spray, which I use sparingly so I can fall asleep. I have faith in modern medicine, but I believe it’s best to let these things run their course instead of chugging Dayquil at the first sign of a tickly throat.
There will be more tomorrow. In the meantime there are two updates of note: the next batch of Matchbook Museum restaurants, HERE – and I do hope you’re enjoying the new site. I’m finding it very satisfying. Everything in its place. Logically named nested subdirectories! Actually, it occurred to me that I was doing the web a disservice, since the names of the matches have never really reflected their real name, and now they’re just arranged numerically. So I’ve created an index page that has the names, in case anyone wishes to search for them. Or rather in case anyone does search, and wishes to the quest to be successful.
The other project is the aforementioned Every Disney Cartoon conceit, HERE, which I will no doubt regret soon enough when I feel compelled to add alternate navigation that lets you follow characters chronologically, but what the hell. I’m doing this because I have almost every single Disney short, and having arranged them chronologically, I should do something to enjoy my labors. It’s a way of making sure I watch them, as opposed to cast an eye towards the folder every few months and bask in the warm satisfaction that it’s all there and it’s all in proper sequence.
Oh, it’s a sickness. Every day I set aside an hour for the following tasks:
Converting a month of archived Bleats to pdf form for eventual printing off
Redoing one folder of the Institute of Official Cheer archives for the relaunch next year (50 subsites, 200 pages), removing 250 photos from iPhoto (and then renaming them with a batch renamer, all so I’m not dependant on iPhoto any more) and converting one hour of old videotape from the previous decade. My daughter will not have some old chaotic scrapbooks or piles of envelopes in the living room end-table drawer. Straight narrative progression of every year.
And now, the novel. I finished everything but the last 10K, which will be the big joy to write: the payoff. The cascading tumbling revelations, the clicks, the reveals, the callbacks. Last night I decided to rely on an Ellroy trick to bridge the space between 1947 and 1949 – headlines and newspaper columns. But while writing one of the columns, penned by the paper’s Man of the People Ole Olson (a big man, white hair, black glasses, ruddy, cheerful, Machivellian – an evil Cedric Adamas) I wrote something that just explained it all. Stopped and looked at the screen and thought: of course.
The narrator of the fifth novel, the last one in the sequence, is Ole’s son, the managing editor of the Citizen-Herald in 2008, dealing with a series of assassinations of reporters on the site of the murders that form the plot of the 1947 book. (The narrator of the first book in the series is the son of a cop who served in Europe with the reporter in the third book, the Sherlock-Holmes-in-a-noir-novel guy.) The plotting of this one has been exhausting, and I’m looking forward to finishing #5 and banging out #2, which is much less knotty. But there I go, like authors everywhere: talking about it instead of doing it. Check your updates; enjoy; see you tomorrow.
Because my dog craps I was prepared when my daughter threw up.
Makes me feel blessed and humbled and mortal and happy to have known what I’ve known.
Hmm. Doesn’t necessarily follow, does it. Back up a bit:
“I’m going to be sick,” she said. And we hadn’t had the pizza yet. Quick –
No, let’s rewind.
Sixteen years ago we got a dog. He was -
No, fast-forward from that, but careful when we get to the right spot . . . there.
Late summer. We’re having Subway sandwiches. When we’re done I remember the bags are good for poop-scooping, and I set one aside.
No, let’s go back to Wednesday. Two days before.
Where was my iPod?
Ah! Perfect. That’s the entry point. Let us begin.
Where was my iPod? Haven’t used it in a while. Need it for an upcoming trip. It comes in handy during the day, of course – driving around, you want a tune or a drama – but when I couldn’t find it in the usual places for a week, I dumped some stuff on my phone and used that in the car. But I wondered if I’d lost it. I’d hate to lose it. It’s one of those Classics with a huge hard drive, holds everything. Or would hold everything; I decided not to load the classical collection until I finished renaming all the tracks. All nine billion of them. The art was fine; I use a picture of the composer for the album art, and that works with the big guys, but when you get into your Elgars and Waltons it’s not so clear. So the composer name should go in the song title field. And, for GOD’S SAKE, figure out whether it’s Symphony #1 or Symphony No. 1, or Movement #3 or Movement III. This stuff gnaws at a man.
You say: who cares? Who could possibly care? Except I was on a cruise last November and got into a long deep discussion about the glories of Bruckner, and the next day I was on the beach in Cozumel and wanted to find the movement we were talking about, and the truncated titles in the playlist were no help whatsoever, and if you’ve ever tried to find the proper movement of a Bruckner symphony while sitting with not much clothes on in a plastic chair in Mexico, you know what I mean.
I do. NOT. Want to experience that again.
It’s funny, but I actually believe there will be a time when my music collection is perfectly organized and tagged and has all the right art. I really think that.
Anyway. The iPod could be in the noise-canceling headphones container; I slip it in the pocket when I take a trip. No. Could be in the Bag of Way Too Many Pockets, which I use on vacations; no. Could be in the new bag – well, the bag I got for Christmas and have regretted asking for, since it’s impractical and too thick and doesn’t have enough pockets. Is it in the Goldilocks Bag, which has the right number of pockets, except for the middle pocket which doesn’t exist at all? No. (The nonexistent pocket is actually an expansion joint built into the bag; deploy the zipper and the bag gets thicker. Never used it. The number of times I’ve unzipped it, thinking it’s a pocket: 1 out of 4.) Tried the drawers where things go. Nothing. Ah: the car.
Checked the glove compartment, and found the manual, of course, which reminded me that the radio didn’t work. When the battery was replaced the radio went dead, and needed a code. Of course I do not have the code in the manual. It would be upstairs in a folder marked AUTO. Make a note of that. I’d used an old code I found in a stack of important cards, and after two unsuccessful tries I realized it was the code for the previous vehicle. See, the first time you enter the code and you get an error, you think, well, I entered it wrong. The second time you know it’s wrong. YOU HAVE ONE MORE TRY before you’re locked out of your own radio. So I backed off on that one. Fast. Anyway, the glove compartment had lots of things I didn’t need, including a plastic bag I’d got from Subway and stored away to use for future dog-poop picking-up. While I was cleaning out the glove compartment, might as well attack the utility space over the dashboard. An old notepad. Expired coupons. A pack of gum with one stick. I filled the bag, set it on the seat – because by now I’m in my parking space at work. Forgot to note that I did this after I parked, because when I got to work I realized I usually shut off the engine at the same time the BBC went to a particular program, and I hadn’t heard it because the radio was dead, and that wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had my iPod, although that really wouldn’t matter because the radio wouldn’t accept any input, including the AUX input from an iPod. But still.
Was the iPod in my work desk? No.
Later that day at home I found another bag I’d used to transport stuff to work, and there it was. The iPod! I plugged it in to charge; it immediately started to sync with the classical playlist. BUT THAT’S A WORK IN PROGRESS! I wanted to say, but really, it didn’t matter. Take the advice of Teri Garr in “After Hours.” Be loosey-goosey about things.
Later that night I got an email alert from Dominos, offering a free Artisanal Pizza. Well, okay. Genoa Salami and roasted peppers? Wife will love that. But it was carryout only. No problem. I ordered pizzas for Friday night a day in advance, and felt like a guy who was on top of things. Seventeen hours later we’re coming back from piano, listening to the radio – yes, code input three was successful – and I’m bashing the music of my daughter’s demographic. “It’s all people singing a melody sampled from something ten years ago and then some guy comes on and talks for a verse so they can say ‘Featuring DJ LC-Bufus’ or whatever.”
She actually agrees, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. Good point. When I turn to the 80s channel, they’re playing “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen, and she groans: this one. I groan.
“I didn’t like it either,” I say, “but they didn’t use synthesizers, and that was rare. Well not that rare, but they made a point of it, to show they were musicians. The guitarist hand-wrapped his own pickups and he’s also a respected astronimist. That’s as good as it gets for jobs: scientist and lead guitarist. But yeah, this song. I worked in a bar and it played all the time.”
“You worked in a bar?”
“I did. Here, you want something else?” I plugged the iPod into the AUX channel, called up the NEW playlist, and clicked a version of “Blue Monday.” One of those 80s remixes.
“When is something going to happen?” she asked. Good point.
I’d put 6:15 for the pick-up time. We were early. I drove south and east and north to chew up some time, got to Domino’s at 6:13. They didn’t have the pizza. In fact they’d never heard of my order. It was a mystery to them. Hmm. Chaos back in the kitchen; the manager was lashing everyone, moaning about the pies sitting under the warmer for 20 minutes, despairing over the tickets pouring out of the automated internet order-generation system. I had a horrible feeling that . . . no. Impossible. I’d put my address into the system, this was the closest store . . .
Ran to the car, got my iPhone, called up the confirmation email – the first time in my life I have ever cared about an automatically-generated Dominos confirmation email – and sure enough, I’d chosen a store three miles to the northeast of my house instead of three miles to the southwest. GAH. GAHHHHH. So. In the car and off we go. It’s now 6:22. I am starving. The pizza is getting cold. Getting? Is.
We get to the store at 6:40. There is no place to park because there’s an enormous old Lincoln in the parking lot blocking all the spots, three people standing outside arguing about something. Great. I pull to the side of the lot, we get out, run inside, get the pizzas. Back in the car; the Lincoln people are still engaged in disputation. I cannot possibly imagine what’s so important that you have to settle the matter in a Domino’s parking lot. On the way back I take the twisty streets leading to the twisty parkways. We have been driving around for 40 minutes.
“I don’t feel well,” she says in the back.
“You’re just hungry,” I say. “We’ll be home soon. Do you want some gum?”
“NO NO I DON’T WANT GUM. I’m going to be sick,” she said. “I need a bag.”
I look to the passenger seat, and there’s a Subway bag, stuffed with alllll the things I got out of the glove compartment and the storage space on the roof, and I pick it up by the end and dump everything out on the floor and pass it back . . .
. . . just in time.
She’s done ruping by the time I pull into the garage. I bring the pizzas up; Jasper Dog is thrilled with the aroma, and yips and dances and barks for a piece. We eat. It’s pretty good. Daughter’s STARVED. I’m thinking: no dog, no bag hoarding instincts, no barf-containment. No iPod location mystery, no sorting through the glove compartment, no instantly-available barf bag. The reason this day didn’t end with a stinky car can be directly traced to the moment I walked past a pet shop in Uptown in April 1996, looked in the window, and saw my dog.
Wife took him for a walk later. He was slow. Very slow. “He’s not going to be with us much longer,” she said. Resigned. Then hopeful: “But I’ve been saying that for three years.”
“You saw him when the food showed up. Annoying as a puppy. Where did he take you tonight?”
“Well, I let him go where he wanted, and we went up the hill to the water tower, and then back down, and when we got home he didn’t want to go up the steps so he went down the street, and I thought he would go up the back steps, but he looked at me, like ‘I’m not done,’ and we walked east and around the neighborhood again. But it was dark and he can’t see anything.”
“But he can smell.”
Nearly deaf and nearly blind, and the world is still a story, every scent a character, every strong odor a twist in the plot. The dog walks outside and the world is his iPod, and it’s always set on shuffle. So it is for us all, really. If you have a dog you know how they come to the door and stand there waiting for you to let them out. Standing at the glass door. The wall that keeps the odors out. They can see, but they can’t smell. Daily life for us is just like that. If you’re lucky someone opens the door and all the glories rush over you.
It’s days like these that you realize how much you miss. For once, you saw all the connections. You suspect there are just as many threads between the now and the then every other day. Probably more. Would you go mad if you considered them? Would you exult to discover how everything braids itself together, fear for the action ten years gone that will explode down the road, anticipate the bloom that grows from a casual act last month? Sure. All of that. All these things. You can’t act if you remember everything. You shouldn’t act if you remember nothing.
And so, to now: a tick past midnight. The dog on the carpet just sighed and snorted. In a few minutes I will carry him upstairs and put him on the soft bed. If he thinks of anything, it might be breakfast that comes when the light grows and the pack stirs. But he goes to sleep quickly at night. He used to spend his days by the window, watching the world, alert, intent. The world was a place of contention. It’s a congenial place these days, soft, indistinct, with quicksilver phantoms in squirrel form that scamper on the edge of his peripheral vision. Not that he’s lost his sense of adventure: the other day I was settling down for a nap, and I heard the squeak of the backyard gate. Daughter hadn’t shut it. Sigh. Went downstairs, went outside, and sure enough the door was open. Jasper was standing in the gap, looking out; I gave the whistle, the only sound to which he responds these days, and he turned around: yes?
I snapped that picture, thinking: that’s him; that’s always been him.
Later he came inside, taking his time up the steps. I can tell it hurts. For him it doesn’t matter that it hurts. What matters is getting up the stairs and getting inside where the good stuff is.
When you’re inside, the good stuff is outside. Vice Versa. That’s why we love dogs. They boil it down to lessons we can’t dismiss. They know us too well.
So, to sum up this Bleat: because my dog craps I was prepared when my daughter threw up.
What I’m supposed to do with this information, I’ve no idea.
The wind picked up the gazebo and moved it two feet. The gazebo weighs 150 pounds, at least. Perhaps I should have gathered up the bug screens; they acted as sails. A chair was knocked over as well.
The fact that I’m leading with a chair being overturned gives you a sense of the pell-mell, dynamic nature of the day.
That’s fine, isn’t it? Some days you just get things done. and recounting what you did would be boring to others, but that doesn’t it mean it was inherently boring. Objectively boring. Some of the things I do would make some people stare slack-jawed with disbelief: really? You renamed all the Disney short cartoons by year, separated the characters by folders according to the original “Treasures” series disks, then set up a series of aliases to create a complete chronological account of all the Disney cartoons?
Really? Of your own free will?
Yes. Because in 2012 I’m going to watch the entire Disney oeuvre, as much as I have, in sequence. It’ll be a hard slog at the start, because those 1920s black-and-white cartoons – well, a little goes a long way. I remember showing a few to my daughter when she was young, and we’d watch the Silly Symphonies or Mickey in B&W disks, and her reaction would be confused: cartoon not funny. Lots of creatures with maniacal grins hopping up and down in endless loops. The 30s material is better, but there are still some what-the-HELL-people pieces in there.
It’s the title cards that knock me out, over and over. They’re just gorgeous. It goes from this . . .
to this . . .
to this . . .
to this . . .
. . . and beyond. The typography is usually wonderful, and that’ll be part of the fun.
Anyway, I’m spent. Or rather I have just been looking at things on a screen all day and manipulating things on a screen all day and if I’m going to get anything done tomorrow night, and not scream in horror when I sit down at my desk to look at things and manipulate things, then I’d best do something else and let my brain refill. Thanks for your patronage this week; see you Monday.
PS My “something else” consisted of watching “The Incredibles” for the first time in half a decade. Wow. I could write an entire Bleat on the music alone . . . but I think I already did.
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