"That was an act of mercy."-- Megan Ketch
The generation gap is pronounced enough, in the dowager's circumstance, to illuminate the archaeological aspects of comfort in following a program schedule, but ever since Hugh Laurie wrapped up House, yours truly has a deficit reduction. If she wants a cable show like Six Feet Under, it needs to be purchased and streamed, or scavenged on You Tube, not that binge watching is necessarily conducive to mitigating tinnitus and the agitation of stress piss. As weary as video is, the will to discipline crumples, easier to eat and view, as room for eating and reading is crimped. In that vein, American Gothic has the expected level of eccentric exaggeration enlarging upon complicity, in a tinsel level homage to the actual Hawthorne, who resonates yet with great power-- not that the dowager has been faithful to the series. The back story of Garrett's log cabin years sang to my soul up until the suffocation, even though I endorse euthanasia in my radicalized fashion. In trying to ease the strains of mio poppa, I suggested home hospice care for the pathological stepmother. The only reason I can place before me as to why my father is killing himself over this vile snake (mutual antipathy toward Louise unites the sister and I yet) is that he doesn't want to be alone. I made the mistake of informing the cancerous aunt, and enter in the pyrotechnics. How would I like it if someone put me in hospice? I started to argue that Presby has been trying to make me the state's problem for years, as Marie herself so recently threatened through Trudy Richardson's instigation, but she did not want to be reminded of our familial sparring match, indicating I could do with other alliances.
I love Marie, but she needs to prepare to die, as does Louise, my remaining paternal uncle, my father, as do I, for that matter, just not at Inglis House, hence stark options, as the storm dampens the end of summer, leaving me not too disheartened about skipping festivities, as the Rosenbach, so many years ago, was my last grasp toward revitalization. No regrets, but there is no longer much interest, even if I had the money. Hearing loss strains the populist lectures, and the quasi-academic atmosphere doesn't offer enough to meet my intellectual demands before my synapses fail, as they will if I can't get the fuck out from under this landlord, carping away.
I may vaguely recall the docu-drama on which Code Black is based, but the show is little more than a tapered version of ER, harsher, slightly messier in some respects, but still television, soft pedaling the truth about modern medicine, offering resolution, didactic salves, because people want gauze on reality, and my reality is my cynicism. I'd toss the Western medical paradigm straight down into our depleting fossil fuel reserves. Saying I don't believe in it is too simple. It is more about quality of care and difficulty of access simply to get the technology for non-terminal prognosis. Stable quadriplegics such as I should not have to jump through hoops to upgrade. Even for an individual with my acumen, at my poverty level the red tape is too much, and with me, even when I have a treatable instance, physicians cut corners, precisely because I'm a cripple. Why mince words? Next to Saving Hope, Code Black is a comparative Hamlet, as network discovered, since the former is now an ION retread in my area. The series tries to circumvent the generic pretty people syndrome by acknowledging a metaphysical realm of mystery in the movement toward entropy, with all our angst and hang ups, but even in reruns, there is no compelling reason to sacrifice my dwindling time constraints, though I'm watching it this evening, since the storm stonewalling its way up the coast applies itself to my bio-genic rhythms, managing my stool earlier, not that such fortunes will last. Another urinal stint, then bread and butter. Joyce Carol Oates, the fierce novelist whom I no longer read, imposed unremitting violence on her characters, in an exposition still posited in a civilization not threatened with imminent collapse, while the visual apocalypse has run its course, starting with Lost, culminating in The Walking Dead relocating to AMC. More than likely, civilization will blip a little here, a little there: like Philippine death squads, the continued erosion of superpower status across the board, the death clinics from Soylent Green come to life, this even though we ignore the inconvenient fact that they thrive at a lively pace, not quite on the free market terms that gave Milton Friedman a hard on.
"The various kinds of sovereignty do not necessarily covary."-- Stephen D. Krasner
Frankenheimer's direction in The Horsemen is not necessarily New Wave, but it could not have been what it is without David Lean coming beforehand, and now stands as a favorite of spastic's hothead youth, previously unknown but for nostalgia television. The cinematography is rich, splendid, in colors of beauty and brutality, its thematic aims not so clearly deciphered, not quite about man's destructive capacity with his livestock either. Who knew camels would kill each other at the behest of their trainers?
Frankenheimer seems to focus solely on man and beast in contention, without tipping the scales one way or the other. It is left for viewers to wonder why Omar's Uraz chooses to cripple himself instead of mending properly after breaking his leg, but it is similar to the way I may choose to bring this to an end and dump myself on the street. Obstinate individuals need the contest, and yet Uraz makes it extreme. After he has a concealed amputation and a victory ride on Jahil, the game trained warrior horse of his father, he rejects his village and goes off with a Taliban-like mountain herder who trains his goat to be a lethal killer at the bong of a drum roll. It is a weird quiet film that admires the defiance of natural anarchy as a way of life, something quietly eroded in progressive sensibility, and yet beneath the surface, the wealth of the developed world is under tremendous strain, analogous to the ephemeral doll like perfection of Leigh Taylor Young in Soylent Green. Given the actual state of civilization depicted on location, it is the actress as a trophy fuck who seems unreal, almost as if doctored for a commercial. Her upkeep must have cost a fortune, and her fate, left to its inferences as Charlton is carried away, wounded, mortally or not, protesting the horror of manufactured cannibalism. I'm not the first person to point out that liberalism unwilling to recognize limits invites catastrophe.
The conception of sovereignty is nonsensical, but some states are more sorereign than others. After 9/11, once I had all the facts, I actually would not have occupied Kabul. We should have wiped out Saudi Arabia, and the subsequent genealogy of events would have been different. Afghanistan, as a state, doesn't seem to function, and as with anything else, nation builders need to get out of the way.
In this regard, he was a persistent critic of American Exceptionalism, the profoundly Protestant notion that America has been singled out by God as a uniquely virtuous nation.-- James L. Fredericks, American Innocence
In the pop culture sense, ABC always plays footsie with our American Innocence, and somehow gets it right. In comedy it might be Ugly Betty, overcoming Vanessa Williams, but in science fiction, the theme always seems to be The Hero who walks alone wants to understand God, and the alien is a stand in for the supernatural being we don't quite know how to trust. Nevertheless, Defying Gravity intrigued and it would be nice if someone in the studio system brought it back for the Grand Unification.
the whispers tries again, and like Halle Berry's Extant, it is a more sophisticated upgrade on the collective threat in Village of the Damned, but the threat is not an ideology; it is the overwhelming complexity of systems. Whatever Drill is, however, it is not representative of Grand Unification, but rather the Grand Spanking. the whispers has moments, chilling connections we need to make between childhood lack of comprehension and unspeakable tragedy, but the screen writers guild is recycling a formula of ominous invader friend in disguise. Asimov took care of that over 40 years ago by merging space opera (The Foundation) and stripping AI of sentimentality (I, Robot). I cannot remember the entire plot of trilogy plus sequel, and fail to recall how the Mule utilized mind control and was ultimately vanquished-- but the end was cold. Protagonist discovers Robot essentially takes the role of Creator, and that is a very likely possibility for our future.
My favorite science fiction film is not the most technically sophisticated, and nor the most complex classic, but I like how Soylent Green works as a film, for it also bespeaks to real possibilities within our caste system where we cannibalize ourselves as it is.
I pitched to Commonweal a few times, contradictory Atheist Catholic I.
"Oooo, nah nah nah," Joni with her back up in the folk era
Mmm. I missed a luncheon date at The Watermark, because I skipped a day, distracted over the Quantum, and upset with Rhett Hackett. I posted to his site that I did not like "being bluffed by liberal bullshit artists," and then tried an email later, and only got a courtesy call explaining his foundation's change of heart; I was trying to be persuasive so that they would understand that if I can do anything with the little time I've left, I want to stop medical model brutality and other forms of violence from destroying women with my ability in the future, but it was a plea for shielding on deaf ears, and if I try this again remind me that I hate liberalism, would you? And I'd imagine there goes any write up as a nice profile piece on New Jersey's mission in life to be the escape haven from New York and Philadelphia. (But we'll allow that to simmer.)
It does matter, the long term affect, despite the fact that it discomfits my sister and brother, I'm still suffering the consequences of being an aggravated assault victim at the hands of Brandon Phillips, just as the treating psychologists predicted when I was on my liberal tether with the defunct Matrix Research Institute, and I feel like a pin cushion for any mode of target practice you'd care to imagine, which is why I do not trust CNA's, even Tim, whom I've known for any number of years-- not in the sense that he'd hurt me, but that he's a welfare player, and will feel smug when the Department of Public Welfare processes me into a Soylent Green wafer. We do not literally cannibalize ourselves, but we're already there, rather late in the day to examine primate controls the primates are placing on themselves without stopping to reflect that risk is necessary, so is disease, and decomposition.
Mitchell, though she falls into my generational nomenclature, might as well be Lady Gaga. I know they are recording artists, but draw blanks. Mitchell was simply recognized as a decorative beatnik, popularizing the Kerouac zeitgeist to always burn the tread on asphalt, warning Madonna in the 80's that the limelight would fade for the Material Girl at some point, never really giving ourselves time to pause, put a break on the controls we inject into and onto our anatomy, to reconsider the industry surrounding the obituary, the underlying avarice we display when faced with the fallibility of mortality. With all the ethics surrounding journalistic integrity, apparently the paparazzi cannot distinguish being comatose from other ailments into a seventieth decade which might lead to fainting spells.
I am very bitter about the surgical aggressions to my body, unlike some, if all it amounts to is cruelty and entrapment in a public housing matrix which is an inhumane forced form of diversity, which all comes down to how and where we invest resources. I might have been perfectly happy, in my late twenties, to live in a small group home, and I mean small, for those who were developmentally damaged but had matriculative ability. I should have been with my peers, not terrorized by the venomous elderly, and what the fuck can I do about it now? Riverfront told me, yesterday, if the Jazzy is seven years old, Medicare would allow me a new one.
Uh huh. I cannot stay at Riverside, and most of you have no idea what equipment acquisition is like with my level of indigence.
"Stop complaining about your on site visits." The former Linda Richman, failing to consider my future rate of attrition.
Hollywood has so commercialized the process of dying it is easy to forget how radicalized the ritual has become since the human animal invented cultural memories. Death through aging or illness used to be an unfortunate but expected communal reality. The invention of theatrical role playing as a form of didactic social instruction reflects this, (setting aside totem transformations). The tragedy of Hamlet is camped today, but in Renaissance Europe, a dead king convulsed the state. Medicalization robs us of communal sobriety and the sharing of grief. It is palliative care, family grouped around a bed, patient set apart by monitors, intravenous feeds, hospice, morphine, barbiturate saturation. We still have sudden death, the shock, handling a dead pet we could not save, losing a husband at the race track to thrombosis, mechanized destruction of our flesh by machine, these days even more chilling since a joystick can deliver it, but the sanitation of death is reflected back via media norms on an ever shifting landscape. The 21st century insists we process the dying as a psychodrama with its own rules. I have dealt with a few of these films, one that eludes me at the moment but it is either still on my other account or buried in here and will come round again, but more important is the modern death as a jigsaw puzzle is a common directorial scheme, good or bad. Darkness, Jacob's Ladder, the poorly made I Inside, Identity. All of these jump cut, keep us guessing, want the viewer to feed on uncertainty.
Fascinating, therefore, that E. G. Robinson would use it, the dying itself, to force Charlton to live energetically in his lead in Soylent Green. I researched this uncited Wiki passage, and dissatisfied, changed it to what traceable sources assert.
This doesn't mean Robinson, who carried Hollywood through the golden age, did not manipulate Heston, shocking the younger man into a raw integrity within a dystopian landscape, already creeping upon us, despite our billions in number. MRSA now eats people because of western healthcare's brutal success. For those of us not species optimists, that spaceship lottery will no doubt be a dicey proposition.
"lnventa la noche en ventura
otra noche,
otra espacio" Octavio Paz, Pasado en claro, with slight license
Carol never had the rabbit's foot, but she educated me about everything else, the elder sister of my best friend to whom I latched after the rift with Susan. Carol was floor captain of the apartment units in my university housing, and instead of turning myself into Vassar Miller or SE Hinton, the blonds of my block fomented my education, like a kid in a five & dime, virgin bugged at the shiny pink and conveniently large penis, less impressed with the egg, vaguely recalling skepticism. Carol was attractive, more mild version of her sister. Sue was voluptuous, more drama queen. I miss them both, terribly. Drank with them both, a drunk pathetic dead weight spaz hanging with the alpha girls who could afford to treat sex like a five and dime. I'm not a virgin any longer, and yes, I really was a mistress to married men, with real sexual intercourse, but those evenings, Carol educating me about pleasures I never could realize, represent moments of positive intimacy with other women I'll never inhabit again; never invested in enhancements. If I did now-- shrug. My clitoris extends slightly, off standard but not unusual. Maybe this is why I shit a horse with Linda's excited email transmission. I miss her too. Not the woman she is, an aged mantis, but the younger tag team we were; there was a personal bond. She sold me down river for an ugly faggot with the emotional repertoire of a five year old, and I can't get away from them, the freaks. His conceptual inequality sounds magnanimous, and I do not doubt Reich has the authentic brawn of a street peddler; he may have even met the transvestite with s/his infantile bitch with testes on the leash, but he'd never socialize with them.
Was there a seduction? I suppose, but not for that kind of experimentation. It was a fencing match and spastic believed I could play the hand, deliberately blind to the fact she and I were in the process of destroying what I should have left alone. My life was about to fall apart, and this game of shirking blades made it worse. The critics are right about Soylent Green. Heston is always a gesture of granite stoicism, but it was a film of my time, textured and colored perfectly for the Me decade jeremiad. Robinson burned in our minds because he really was being cannibalized by cancer that pulled conviction out of Charlton, an intensity of conviction. We did not use the word procedural as a categorization, not in those days, but this was an exceptional dichotomy of pursuit in a world that no longer had standards, practices we trusted.
I can see it, the end of our species. We will not come to our senses, colonize Titan, or have any real sense of intrigue about Spader, in a television slot of viscous and carefully delineated slime, deploying diseases, anhidrosis, like a damn card trick. James, you're of my generation and you are capable of a better disreputable range. What the fuck are you doing?
"You'll see my smile looks out of place."-- Smokey Robinson
To be a writer is nothing, but to be an author through the track of my tears exacts the terrible necessity of its price, the over-invested attachment, which for me will lead to some sort of literature generation of the tangible kind, either with a book jacket, or laminated article, through the ebb and flow of accreted megalomania, crested after challenging the levies, don't believe my heart isn't broken, that it has taken so long to see the distaste in exploiting human suffering.
I cared. I still do, and, barring a miracle, will return to the constraints of being a micro managed living wage, an indigent puddle for someone's salary, but there has to be a better way to do it than the socialized lowest common denominator we have. One of those is instituting rational euthanasia, stringent safe guards in place, rating levels of treatment accordingly. The health care professional would make less money, but our species would conserve finite resources through compassionate culling. Given population demographics we will be forced into it eventually, regardless of speculative venue, Soylent Green or Cuaron's contemporaneous homage.
Ethan Saylor would have become expendable; it would have been an inevitable consequence. The officers no doubt over-escalated his compliance, but it is an issue of adaptation, and the boy did not know how to mitigate his behavioral intransigence. It is irrelevant, whom among us had the skills to coax him down; he would have been killed in exactly the same way that compliance models surreptitiously attempted to suck me under while my country was conveying that I too could have equal opportunity. This is how socialized paradigms, disability centers, public housing, socialized medicine, destroy the individuals they deign to assist.
I do not sign the Saylor petition. And I won't. It comes down to a value judgment of husbandry. If you believe this is callused, Liberty Resources does exactly the same thing. A very few become essential personnel, earning their salaries on the basis of rationed scarcity, making personal autonomy more expensive and inefficient than necessary, thereby unable to recognize value, the skills of intelligence that could lead to system enhancement.
