Love on the Line

Today, I purchased a rather worn out book at the Strand, _The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century_, which reprints the cartoon strips from 1929 to 1968. Hiding underneath the jacket flap is an inscription in the lost art of actual script, dated “12/72”:

“My darling, Enjoy the past of the hours you spent with Buck Rogers and the future he lives in and think every now and again of the future, your future, our future, of what it is, of what it can be, and remember always that I love you, P.”

More than just about anything else in my life, books — physical texts — are the embodiments of our complex emotional greatness, even when saccharine, but especially when sincere. P’s gift to Darling is proof. Will our iPads, Kindles, many other electronic gizmos carry the same personal and historical weight? The iPhone I’m writing this post on sure as shit doesn’t.

When Frankie Sings

With him and all that is associated with him, it's all about the cycle of cliches. I wake up every morning, and before I check the news I say to myself, "Shit couldn't get any worse." At the end of the day, just as I close my eyes, I think, "You can't make this shit up." I wake up. Repeat. I go to bed. Repeat. Seemingly, ad infinitum.

I just don't want to open my eyes on November 4, 2020 repeating for the 1461st time, "Shit couldn’t get any worse." Instead, I'd rather be humming, as Carolyn Leigh wrote and Frank Sinatra sang, "The best is yet to come."

It should be noted that Ol' Blue Eyes once told Ol' Jaundice Face, "Go fuck yourself!" after the latter failed to pay the former what he was contractually owed to play Atlantic City. Big surprise, right?

In the meantime, I'm trying to adjust my perspective to prepare for tomorrow's inevitability: "'It's a real good bet,' the WORST is yet to come." Still, tomorrow's worst may lead to the next day's even worse... and that shit you simply can't make up.

Autumn Shmautumn

Various degrees of self-immolation and a culinary example of “size doesn’t matter” — that little fruit with the nasty stinger on the upper right is the sweetest, spiciest, zestiest chili I’ve ever grown. Called the “Orange Teapot,” this tiny squib packs the taste of a clementine on fire. As far as flavor/fire profile, the Carolina Reaper ain’t got nuthin’ on it.

2019's Chili Season Is Already a-Smokin'

Just a quick pic of the first ripe examples from this year's rooftop harvest:

Left to right: purple cayenne, (traditional) cayenne, Criolla Sella chili, and Yellow Bedder chili.

Mr. Marmalade's Rejection of Newspeak

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/trump-free-speech-colleges.html

This should not be an executive order with the threat of diminished federal funding... but identifying liberal language control as "illiberal" speech is close to getting it right... or do I mean "close to getting it left"? Funny how the Right has to champion liberal expression and the Left is bent on Newspeak. The Orwellian script has flipped. 

How did we get here? 

Where do we go from here?

The idea that my absolute belief in free expression, ALL expression, and the breadth of liberal principals that I ascribe to myself -- all women's rights, all and any gender and non-gender rights, all medical rights, all safety rights, all rights of Freedom and equality for ALL -- are all "rights" which fly in the face of the Right. The fact (FACT!) that the absolute right of free expression has leapt from the principles of the Left to being cause célèbre of the Right is another one of those confusing sociopolitical positions that send sociopolitical ideology into the maelstrom of political positioning (and meaning). 

I recognize that President Hex #FF9900 (https://www.colorhexa.com/ff9900), a.k.a., "Orange Peel," sanctioned this agenda in support of the mealy-mouthed, maggot-spewing, shriveled-dick urine-spraying white men (and women) of marginal humanity floating in their own "Vacuum of Anger" (http://brianphilipkatz.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-vacuum-of-anger.html), but this may force the Left to identify the breadth of its liberalism (with an unhealthy dose of "illiberalism") to include that which is most sacred and most right for all the human rights I believe in... which is all of them.

So, despite being ordered for the wrong reasons and despite the fact that an Orwellian bureaucracy needs to be established to protect free speech (which, in itself, is not "free speech"), I can't help thinking that, in the short term (or at least until we get a leader for plurality, a leader we actually deserve), this might make it easier to be who we are, say what needs to be said, make art like a magnificent motherfucker, and loudly and proudly reject the P.C. Police and their expression controlling shillelaghs clubbing language like baby seals. 

I hate that this had to come from HIM; but, being that I just wrote what I just wrote in the spotlight of his executive order, I'm somewhat, reluctantly grateful. 

Finally Finished with Facebook Forever

I've ended my presence on Facebook because I was starting to despise my "real" friends' virtual lives; and my growing ire was beginning to frighten me.

In all aspects of wasting time on that generator of uselessness, Facebook was making me a full-blown misanthrope. Why? The reasons were many and include:

1. I didn't give a shit about my Facebook friends' repeated attempts at wit, political commentary, statements of love or hate, pithiness, promises, and bombast -- I liked them all more when I knew less about everything they thought about.

2. I didn't trust the "newsworthy" news I was receiving (in my desperate search for insightful explanations) whether from linked posts by my "friends," the invasive news sources (often poorly written) like Vice and News & Guts, and/or algorithmic ads aimed at Facebook's idea of my liberalism.

3. I didn't like myself as I scrolled through my newsfeed in a time-sucking search for something/anything from someone/anyone I actually cared about... only to discover that the best of my real associations have deactivated their accounts (or long ago blocked me because I was "virtually" everything I hated about everyone else).

4. I didn't want to be a stalker... and I felt like a stalker when I followed a post to an old girlfriend's Facebook page and scrolled through her "highlights" only to find myself disappointed in how she turned out  (despite the appearance that she was probably doing a whole lot better than I and the "disappointment" was in me, natch, for judging her while I was wasting my time on Facebook being the gnarly arbiter of my own crappy opinions).

5. I didn't want Facebook tracking me; and I certainly didn't want it advertising my whereabouts when I was trying, so desperately, to hide from the silently circling helicopters.

6. I didn't want to see another sweaty picture of my "friends" either working out or having worked out, preparing to run a marathon or celebrating coming in 127th place in a 5K.

7. I didn't care about what anyone was having for breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper... and the sadly saturated phone pics of said meals had me worrying about everyone's health.

8. I didn't want to stroke anyone's ego any more than it was being stroked by all the inane (I mean "heartfelt") comments of support by Facebook "friends" (supplemented by over 100 "likes" [Isn't that the mark of a successful post?], 27 hearts, 12 frowns, and four furious faces).

9. I didn't want to judge my friends' parenting skills and their rotten children... but I still am (and I blame the parents for making their children so rotten).

10. I didn't (and still don't) understand emojis and memes... and I abhorred being relegated to using them.

11. I didn't want to read Oscar predictions; snide remarks about struggling teams and ballplayers; trite music, television, and movie reviews by people I once admired for their critical expressions but now loathe because they advertised the worst of themselves in posts posted several times a day; and date night restaurant reviews while swimming in absurdly large glasses of alcohol.

12. I didn't care about others' unfocused pictorial adventures in Italy and Thailand and I cared less about what anyone was doing at anytime in any romantic place anywhere (especially if in a sunny, warm climate while I ailed in my nor'-east winter miseries).

13. I didn't appreciate the clickbait rabbit hole and the time wasted falling through Dunderlandian absurdities of celebrities, mullets, deadly animals, and botched surgeries.

14. I didn't have the will to not click "Next."

15. I didn't understand how it was that I always received a perfect score on all those quizzes when I knew that I didn't know some of the answers; and I know my IQ is not THAT high.

And... 16. I didn't want Facebook's shoddy, shitty business practices anywhere near data connected to me even though I know it's too late to worry about what they're doing with my social e-transcript because they're already doing what they're doing with my publicly-personal information... and it's probably some insidious shit.

Facebook force-fed the worst in me with empty, electronic calories. In turn, I could no longer afford to feed Facebook with what's left of the best in me: My struggling, flailing, sputtering humanity and my REAL love for  "actual" people.