Tag: Musings

Focusing on the absurd

March 30th, 2023

My wife just read me the New York Times article about Donald Trump getting indicted in New York. More dark clouds on the horizon it looks like. Maybe another street fight or two.

But there was something about that article that hit me funny…

How arresting the former Commander in Chief might work – he’d have Secret Service protection while he was being arrested.

How he will probably be fingerprinted but might not have to wear handcuffs, and if he does, whether they would cuff him in front or in back.

What a bind it would put primary opponent Ron DeSantis in if Trump defies the court and stays in Florida.

It just struck me how absurd all this is. It’s like a satire, like something Kurt Vonnegut would write. As much as Cat’s Cradle freaked me out, I love Kurt Vonnegut. Galapagos is also amazing.

It’s the way I deal, same way Vonnegut did when he wrote those two apocalypse stories. When shit goes bad, there’s almost always something funny about it too.

Whatever happens, you have to admit it’s a gripping story. If it was a movie it would be a blockbuster. I’d damn sure watch it. I’m already on the edge of my seat.

I bet Vonnegut is laughing bitterly at America right now, wherever he is. Not as funny as the ending of Galapagos, but pretty good.
Eaten any bugs lately?

March 30th, 2023

My dad spent a lot of time outdoors and knew a lot about the wildlife of Texas, including the kind of critters most folks just step on or ignore.

Each of those white spots on the lower pad are hiding cochineal bugs, source of an important red dye.

Dad knew which ones were harmful, which ones were useful. He loved seeing ladybugs and praying mantises in the garden. He taught me to be curious.

Once he scraped some white web-like stuff from the pad of a prickly pear cactus with a stick. “Inside each one of those spots is an insect called a cochineal bug. Indians used to get red dye from it.”

Dad didn’t like to squish bugs willy-nilly and neither do I – I’m the kinda guy who rescues insects from scared ladies – but that was a pretty neat discovery.

Sorry little bug. I promise I won’t do it again.

Now when I see those white spots on the pads of a prickly pear, I know what they are. And they’re not just a curiosity. Cochineal bugs are still important.

They’re the source of the natural dye carmine. You probably ate or drank some of it today.

It’s been a source of income in Mexico for a long time apparently. It’s a tradition I hope they can keep alive. Apparently that’s up in the air at the moment.

Interesting video about how cochineal bugs are cultivated in Mexico to produce the natural food dye known as carmine.
Deja vu all over again

March 28th, 2023

Sting – Russians (This one came out in ’85, one year after I didn’t get Raptured)

A friend just texted me a story about something the Chinese government said and commented “scary.” I wasn’t scared. Not scared of getting nuked by China or Russia. If you’re my age, you’ve heard it all before.

Those regimes don’t want to get Mutually Assured Destructioned any more than the US does. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not going to spend my time fretting over it.

I did enough of that as a kid. Movies and TV shows were full of nuclear apocalypses. I used to have nightmares about seeing mushroom clouds outside my window.

Being a Southern Baptist, those fears got mixed up with the other thing they taught us to fear and/or look forward to: The Rapture, followed by the Time of Tribulation (or the other way round, depending on who you asked).

In any case, I tried to mentally prepare myself for both.

Content warning: Upsetting imagery. The Christian Nightmares Tribulation Band covering the 1969 “classic” Rapture song I heard who knows how many times, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” (The films weren’t this bad, but I got a steady diet of this kind of messaging in the ’80s.)

I would get Raptured if possible. If not, I’d go through the whole Left Behind thing (same plot, but this was before the book series). If it was nukes, I’d wonder about who might want to restart the human race with me and where I might find a good cave to hide in.

It was an obsession when I was a teenager. I was like, can we get this over with so I can make the Rapture? I feel some sinning coming on and I can only hold it back for so long.

But there came a point where I had quit dwelling on it and live. So I did. As traumatic as recent developments have been, I still have to live as long as I’m alive. Sing While You May.

Strangely enough, I’m borderline obsessed with The Legendary Pink Dots and their singer Edward Ka Spel, who sing about all sorts of apocalypses. I find it cathartic. Exposure therapy I suppose.

Edward Ka Spel – Dotzsong
Which version gets to be me?

March 27th, 2023

David Bowie – Changes

I’ve lost most of last night’s dream, which felt like quite an adventure. I was with a team of people and we were on a mission.

Some were NPCs (learned that one recently from gamers) who were there for me to talk to, some were me, trying to make plans. Sometimes I forgot which was which – you know how you sometimes swap characters in dreams.

Our mission was to stop whoever was manipulating our timelines, changing our consciousness, making us over. We all wanted the identities WE chose.

Just before I woke up, someone who both was and wasn’t me said, “These aren’t the clothes I was wearing when I went to bed.”

I’d changed, and no memory of that change. Which sounds rather like a message from my unconscious mind, doesn’t it? Seeing as how my unconscious mind in charge of which dream characters wear what.

I’ve been some very different people over the course of my life. That’s why I believe in redemption and why I refuse to believe people can’t change. People don’t change all at once, but we DO change.

Sometimes it makes my head swim, remembering some of the beliefs I once held. Like, how could that have been me? Yet he was. I have the memories to prove it.

But just like in my dream, all those identities you used to be are in there somewhere, tugging at your sleeve, telling you what to do. But you’re in charge, not them. You get to pick which ones you listen to.
The one that got away

March 25th, 2023

The Mellow Meal Time – What Were We Talking About

I hate losing thoughts. I’ll be thinking about something interesting and then I get distracted and it’s gone, back to the underground ocean where ideas live and swim around.

Will the one I just lost pop back up again or did I lose my one chance to think about it?

I also resent the fact that my wife won’t help me. I’m like, what was I just talking about? “I don’t know I wasn’t paying attention.”

Dang it. Probably some of my best material too. Come back interesting and/or funny thought. I’ll write you down next time I promise.
On being a different kind of sci fi guy…

March 25th, 2023

Once my dad handed me a copy of Robert Heinlein’s The Star Beast my fate was sealed. I would forever be a serious sci fi guy, not a typical fan.

I remember drawing a spaceship during Sunday School once and another kid goes, “That doesn’t look like the Star Trek Enterprise.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” I said. “I made it up.” He just said, “Eh, you just don’t know how to draw it right.”

Story of my life. Always out of sync with what’s popular.

As I got older, Dad and I shared books, browsed for hours in used bookstores. Our house became a library.

He turned me onto people like Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement, Isaac Asimov of course, Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester and Clifford Simak.

On my own I found writers like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I read tons of Golden Age stories. All those books changed the way I think.

I still like “regular” sci fi for an escape, but it’s more like candy. I need science fiction that blows my mind.

OK, so it was a little bit derivative.

One of my trippy sci fi things that no one else got. Organic spaceship. Cool right? (Messed up the sky and gave up.)

I love when a high concept series or movie gets popular. I was so happy when Amazon saved The Expanse, though I wish they’d had more episodes to flesh out the last season.

I also loved Prime’s take William Gibson’s The Peripheral. More Gibson please!

I’m even more impressed when someone pulls off something like that on the cheap.

Everything Everywhere All at Once was everything I wanted and more. Big ideas, social commentary, existential questions, not to mention funny as hell.

I’ll watch anything The Daniels make now. Don’t sleep on Swiss Army Man, btw. It’s weird, but it’s deep. Deeper than you think.

I hate when people think I’m a snob about this stuff. I like what I like. Plus it reminds me of those times I shared with Dad. The only sad thing is he’s not here to discuss it with.

The Legendary Pink Dots – Rainbows Too? Edward Ka Spel’s mythos is steeped in high concept science fiction. One of the many reasons I’m obssessed with the Dots.
Bigfoot eats apples

March 22nd, 2023

My favorite newspaper when I worked for a newspaper. Wish I’d saved the one about Bat Boy.

When I was a kid, I totally believed in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Whatever anyone said, Loch Ness could have a dinosaur. I’d read theories. (I was rooting for plesiosaur).

As for Bigfoot, there were still a lot of trees for him to hide in. Bigfeet and Yetis and Nessie were real until proven otherwise. I was like that about a lot of things, UFOs and whatnot.

I used to get a kick out of Art Bell’s show on AM radio. He was into things like that. I liked the one where people lowered a mic into a pit and heard the cries of the damned. Pretty entertaining.

Waking Bear – Bigfoot

Sometime during the recent Covid lockdown I went out for a meetup. The first one of those breaks where you could go out if you socially distanced. One of the ladies was a Bigfoot enthusiast. And boy was she enthusiastic. I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t want to spoil her fun. She seemed so happy.

She had just been on Bigfoot expedition and met the big hairy man himself. Well, not really met him, but she heard him roar, so she knew he was close. He sounds like Chewbacca, btw.

Turns out if you leave an apple in a field and give him a little privacy, Bigfoot will eat it. He loves apples.

Her apple disappeared and guess what was in her tent? That very apple. Bigfoot wasn’t hungry, so he carried the apple to her tent to let her know he was still glad to meet her. “I know it wasn’t a squirrel, because it was a large organic apple!”

Hearing that story made me think of Boy Scout snipe hunts. You might have heard of them. The older boys gave you a tow sack and had you bang two sticks together. They were gonna chase him toward you and you had to be ready to catch it.

Their descriptions were all over the place.

You didn’t know if it looked like an alligator or a skunk and the older boys wouldn’t say. You had to be ready for anything. Then when you least expected it, the older boys jumped out and went “Raaaaah!” They didn’t scare me. Much.

I thought Snipes were imaginary until sometime in my 20s. Turns out they’re a kind of shore bird. You’re not likely to catch one in a burlap sack. Not in the woods anyway.

I wonder if those Bigfoot expedition guides might’ve been Boy Scouts once?
Fame’s glittery trap

March 22nd, 2023

I bet many famous people would agree with that statement. You’re surrounded by masses of people who “love” you.

At the same time, you’re isolated from them. It must feel like a curse at times.

David Bowie – Fame

If a fickle public turns on you, it will try to wreck your confidence and your life. Enemies new and old. Die-hard fans defending you in all the wrong ways. Stalkers who want to do a John Lennon on you.

You couldn’t pay me enough.

Internet famous looks even more horrifying, because it can happen so fast. I don’t envy it and I feel sympathy for those it happens to, even the “bad” ones. If you seek it and it happens, you’re the dog that caught the car. Like old school famous with extra death threats.

Being young on today’s Internet would’ve broken my brain. Being “known in town” was hard enough.

First and hopefully last paparazzi photo.

Creators at any age who handle viral fame with grace and integrity impress the hell out of me.

How hard it must be, competitors hoping to take you down at any moment, getting imprisoned by your own fan club who will punish you if you slip up or change.

It’s why I both admire and feel bad for today’s youth. They are so adaptable – I can barely stay on my surfboard anymore. But the anxiety must be crushing.

My wish for the young is that they receive what they’re really looking for, to find meaningful connections and be understood.
Sing while you may

March 21st, 2023

The Legendary Pink Dots – Zero Zero.

We’re all like the people in that song if we’re honest. Human beings have been searching for answers for as long as we’ve been on earth. Sad, but beautiful.

That’s why I love The Legendary Pink Dots’ motto, “Sing While You May.” However ugly life may seem, there’s always something beautiful in it. Usually the part that’s most human.

My wife, finding her joy at the karaoke bar.

I’ve concluded that, conscious or not, existential dread is at the heart of all extremism. In fact, maybe it’s the basis for all human behavior. Adult behavior at any rate.

No one knows what it all means or what comes next, whatever they may tell you. If they seem very certain, they’re probably trying to convince themselves.

Arguments usually amount to, “I am important, you are worthless” and “I know you are, but what am I?”

No one has the answer to “what am I?” We breeze right past it. But it’s always there in the background.

Scrape the paint off a violent extremist and you will find a person who feels worthless to the core.

Someone who can think of no other way to stave off fear of the void than to push that feeling onto others.

What could give you meaning, when the tools you’ve been offered turned out to be worthless or forever out of reach?

What do you have left? You’re alive.

So sing. Whatever that means to you. Sing while you may.

Me, doing Pink Floyd at Karaoke. No idea who the girl was, but she had a lot of fun.

Earth Wind and Fire – Sing a Song
Living under Damocles’ Sword

March 19th, 2023

Another reminder of why Beau of the Fifth Column is one of my favorite people ever. Such a good message for today.

A lot of people are feeling the way this young man does. His message touched me because he reminds me of me. This was hard thing to face once I really came to understand it.

Richard Westall – Sword of Damocles

When you get old, you get kind of jaded about this stuff. It’s easy to forget there are young people who aren’t used to nuclear saber rattling, or the thought of what could happen.

It doesn’t help that we’re running head-on into another man-made crisis no one seems to care about.

Those of us who are old enough to remember Cold War I, remember the feeling.

After a while you get used to it, living under all those invisible flight paths. It takes time. My mother had duck and cover exercises at school. Yet she married and had a family.

I had nightmares. I worried. But I learned to cope. Now that it looks like Cold War 2 is under way, younger generations are going to have to learn that skill.

It is absurd to have to live under a system like this, where a few people have the power to end it all. Enjoy the absurdity. It helps. A little…

You can’t sit around and have an existential crisis all day every day. It’ll wear you out. I know. Get up and do stuff. It hasn’t happened yet.

Daniel Knox – Armageddon Song