Champagne or Arsenic

A Democrat just wrote me, asking playfully if he should buy champagne for Election Night next Tuesday. I, not so playfully, responded:

Re champagne: A vote for Biden is a vote for sanctuary cities, allowing open borders, abolishing ICE, defunding the police, not clearing out homeless encampments, not stopping looting, destroying the economy by taxing job-creators to subsidize the shiftless, court-packing, tearing down statues of our country's founders, encouraging fake news like the Mueller investigation/impeachment (which both proved to be false) while simultaneously encouraging news outlets to ban stories that don't adhere to the left-wing narrative. Oh, and for wearing TWO masks to prove just how darn virtuous you are while accepting millions from Russia and China (after falsely accusing your opponent of doing exactly that very thing). I'd buy either absinthe or arsenic if I were you. No one should celebrate dystopian Orwellianism.

Banned on Facebook: President Trump dances to YMCA at Pennsylvania rally (10/20/20)

I tried to post this on my Facebook page tonight: Banned.

I'm a political junkie, watch C-SPAN all the time to see what's actually happening out in the field. Trump has rallies with thousands attending; Biden has... a few members of the press showing up. Does the press really think that Biden is going to win this?

I Voted

 

First day of Early Voting in Travis County (Austin). I went around 2pm, had a 40-minute wait.

The lady who checked my ID: "Did you get your mask at Sue Patrick?" Yes, I did! :)

Hardy Kick

A couple of months ago, I, out of boredom, started re-reading Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." Which led to "Jude the Obscure," which led to "Mayor of Casterbridge," and then "Far from the Madding Crowd." (Favorites so far, in order: Jude, Mayor, Tess, Madding.) I've also now read what is allegedly a posthumous bio by Hardy's second wife (but actually written by Hardy himself before he died), four other bios, and bios of both the first and second wives. (Gittings is my favorite biographer so far.) I also recently bought a half-complete set of a 1905 Harper's Hardy collection, plus, just a couple of days of ago, the below collection of both books and ephemera.

 

Andy Griffith (A Face In the Crowd, 1957): Free Man In The Morning

One of my favorite movies, and favorite performances, ever.

George Jones: I Miss a Lot of Trains

Recorded live, May 1983, at Jones's Music Park in Colmesneil, Texas.

George Jones: The Corvette Song

George Jones - Someday My Day Will Come (1979)

1979. Lowest point of his life. About to be committed to a sanitorium. 120 lbs anorexic. Coked up. Alcoholic. Beautiful song and singer.

2020 NBA finals have lowest ratings in NBA history

 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-basketball-nba-tv-ratings-record-low-idUSKBN26N0IO

Very gratifying to read: Basketball finals score lowest ratings in NBA history. (This particular Reuters story is about Game 1, but ratings only sank lower as the series continued.) Could it be that others, like me, don't want to see leftist propaganda printed on the court and on the back of players' jerseys? I love my Spurs, for instance, and I have for 20 years. But I refuse to watch ANY game with such propaganda.

Time Machines / Steampunk

Last weekend, watched the doc "Our Time Machine" on PBS, on the making of Chinese artist Maleonn's play "Papa's Time Machine" and a simultaneous exploration of Maleonn's own father's descent into senility. (The original play also dealt with the same subject---an attempt to re-establish shared memories, via puppets and installation art, with a father who was losing his memory.) http://neocha.com/magazine/papas-time-machine/

The subject matter was intellectually fascinating and sad---my own parents are 79 and 80. (Neither senile as of yet, though I only speak to one of them.) And I, in my 50s, am also increasingly aware of the stealthy loss of faculties. But what helps alleviate the agony of loss? Work! Aesthetics! Amid the personal loss, the documentary pays special attention to Maleonn's vision for the puppets and scenery that help tell his story. "How beautiful," I thought while watching. I didn't have a name for what I was seeing. "Mechanical." "Victorian." "Futuristic." When I later researched the name of the documentary online, I learned that the look of Maleonn's vision was considered "Steampunk."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

There are many definitions of "Steampunk," but this phrase from Wikipedia resonated: 

 

Steampunk most recognizably features anachronistic technologies or retrofuturistic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them.

1902 by Albert Robida. Vision of 2000.

How psychologically interesting to me: A 21st-century artist re-interpreting what 19th-century artists were predicting, with the knowledge of what had actually taken place and thus a sly, condescending wink at how ignorant past generations were. While his own current circumstances were equally uncertain, as were the memories of his once-creatively powerful father (in Maleonn's case, his father was the longtime director of Shanghai opera).

As a side note: I learned, further, that one of my favorite movies of all time, Brazil (1985), is also now considered to be part of the "Steampunk" genre. And I'm guessing that another of my favorites, Moulin Rouge (2001), is considered the same.