"I am no longer in the warmth of that cradle." Living, as I do, in the dumpster side of the dump city, Bridgeport, I am subjected to a lot of those overgrown babies with their passive-aggressive hopped-up, loud muscle cars driving outside my (and everyone else unfortunate enough to live close to the street) window. I guess their thinking (to the limited extent they do so) is something like, "If I'm miserable then everyone around me is going to have to be miserable, too." As they rev their engine in infantile frustration yet again. It is hard (I sometimes tell myself) being, as they are, a two year old trapped in an adult body
To my great good fortune I got accepted into a "senior living" home in Hamden. Yes, I'm finally going to the "old folk's home." It is off the street; way off the street which is quiet anyway, so no more loud idiots driving by with their car stereos blasting; no more half-wit housemates who are perpetually in a bad mood because they don't have their mother's tit to suck on anymore nor their cradle to lie in with their warm blanky to provide comfort; they actually have to live life as an adult. How miserable is that? No wonder they are in a perpetual bad mood.
No more of that (for me). Good riddance to all the idiots, half-wits, morons and dick faces. I can now just be left alone to watch the sun shine, the rain fall and the New England seasons come and go. Thank you God or whoever helped me escape this sh*t hole. (See, Trump was right about something; only he was wrong in thinking such places are all in the Third World. Some are right here. Right now.)
Yes, I've heard Sacto has been hellishly hot this summer. When I lived there the meteorological data said we averaged 18 days a year at or above 100 degrees F. I was looking at the Sacramento data for this summer and it seemed like you had already had a two week period in July with 14 days above 100 with who knows how many more 100 plus days coming in August and September (and even early October can be witheringly hot).
It has been brutally hot here in coastal Connecticut for the second consecutive summer with many days at or slightly above 90 degrees F. I've mentioned before when I was growing up here in the 1960s and 70s if it approached 88 or even 90 degrees perhaps once every five or six years that was a big deal.
My new place has AC and though I'm not a big user of AC there are days when a little air conditioning can stand between oneself and heat stroke, particular as I get older.
PS. I haven't heard (no emails) from my old friend in Sacramento in months now. I'm afraid he may have succumbed to the heat or who knows what? His health had been precarious for years (he suffered from what I think was a type of muscular-dystrophy, although he never talked about it and, out of politeness I never inquired). I wish he would send me an email. I don't like to bother him because he is (like me) very reclusive. He lives over by Sac. State just south of the American River in a public housing complex (can't remember the name of it). About 15 or 17 years ago he was "jumped" while walking home from work and beaten pretty badly. I'm afraid the lingering effect of that combined with his overall poor health might be catching up with him.
Perfect summing up of our day... most can't be bothered to read actual words put to paper by real intelligence, and not the dreadful, "artificial" kind (or even just bytes translating ones-and-zeroes on flickering screens - which I dislike, why I hate e-books).
Add to this the non-teaching of script writing ("cursive" is what they call it, I hear) in school, so younger people will now be unable to read beautiful, human, hand-written documents from the past.
Thinking back at my youth, it is hard for me to imagine now that Johnny Carson had Gore Vidal substitute host the Tonight Show.
Even if I knew very few people who read, serious writers were part of the culture. Even some poets like Frost, Sandberg and Auden were on the fringes of mainstream culture.
Fortunately we still have semi literate rappers to carry on that literary tradition.
Mr. Vidal, along with the equally erudite Chris Hedges, were perhaps the only two American public intellectuals to speak out against America's misguided involvement in (invasion of) Iraq in 2003. Both men were (and thank heavens Mr. Hedges is still with us) towering intellects supported by unwavering moral cores.
Mr. Vidal was a well-know bisexual at a time when that was absolutely unacceptable in America. His second novel "The City and the Pillar" was an unprecedentedly frank examination of a homoerotic relationship when such things were simply not discussed in America. He was advised at the time that that book's publication would destroy his writing career before it had even started. It did not.
Unlike some more opportunistic public intellectual figures (I'm thinking in particular of Noam Chomsky, Steve Pinker and the late [British] Christopher Hitchens) Vidal and Hedges never cared which way the public sentiment wind was blowing at any particular time but rather always remained true to their moral core beliefs.
Vidal's greatest writing (in my constrained opinion) were not his novels (although "Julian" the novel about the apostate Roman emperor who wanted to return the pagan religion to Rome and end what he saw as the enervating influence of Christianity was very good especially in its historical understanding. Vidal had a gift for bringing history to life in his historical novels some of them about early U.S. history such as "Lincoln." If it can still be found anywhere). His greatest, most insightful writing was a series of essays he wrote for "The Nation" magazine in the 1980s and 90s under the encouragement of that magazine's then publisher Victor Navasky. Again, in my opinion no one understood U.S. society with the depth and insight of Vidal. He grew up in a Washington D.C. insider family. His mother's father was a U.S. senator from Oklahoma and as a boy Vidal would frequently accompany his blind grandfather into the Senate. And despite Vidal's privileged background, instead of retreating into the comforts of upper class America, he relentlessly stood up for, and on behalf of, the common people of America.
Two great and outstanding men. Two great Americans. One still with us. One not. Rest in peace, Gore Vidal. America thanks you for your great service. (At least this one does.)
PS. Vidal, in one of his two final memoirs (he refused to write an autobiography) admitted to being a good friend to Johnny Carson. Vidal recounted an episode when he and Mr. Carson were drinking a good quantity of beer on Mr. Vidal's balcony at Vidal's villa in Italy on the Amalfi coast south of Naples while Mr. Carson's wife, exhausted from the flight over, slept inside. It was a funny story.
Howdy, Linh. Its hardly an original thought, but in our global society we are all poseurs these days. Ted Kaczynski may have been MK-Ultra batshit crazy, but his observation about being 'oversocialized' was spot on.
Ted Kaczynski was said to have an I.Q. in the 170+ range. He was a professor of mathematics at U.C. Berkeley while just in his 20s. His manifesto, dubbed "the Uni-bomber Manifesto" made a lot of sense at least to some people who have bothered to peruse it.
He apparently was an unfortunate, very unfortunate, victim of the MK Ultra program when still a young man. This is what America does to some of its most talented young people ultimately driving Kaczynski to suicide. What a waste of an exceptional mind. But than, generally speaking, America never needed exceptional minds. It just wants people who show up for work on time and can endure the tedium and monotony of mindless drudgery eight hours a day five or six days a week. Smart people (like Kaczynski) ask too many uncomfortable questions.
Wow LD, showing off your lit chops in that essay. I can't hold a candle. Reading Borges just makes me feel incredibly stupid. But I share with you a love for jazz.
His widow has wrecked his legacy in English. Stay away from Norton editions of his work. Search here for translations that Borges approved or even collaborated with:
You in the bottom cage. Don't bark, Don't bitch, Don't bite. Be a good dog.
False american dreams and promises flutters out back.
Politicians on top, nothing better to do on a fine morning than take the natural position for the great flush, you're in the way bitch, get out of the way!
Israeli camera-men, production crews, and cheap money crowd the remaining scenery, unseen by present viewing angle.
You may be wondering why there are big jugs of water on your cage...
Well, may they at least have the decency to call it rain.
And hey, this is not abuse! The politician is never in the cage. Hence no abuse is to be found present.
And for you bitches who think otherwise, there is harsh forms of censorship present and available to drown you out.
There is no way of knowing how many people noticed the joke, but on a long-ago Simpsons episode there was outside a bookstore a sign that read "Michener $1.99/lb."
Reading that Luc/y Sante interview, the below came to mind for whatever reason. It made me wonder to what degree becoming sick of/exhausted with life as an "anguished exile" factors into (particularly older) men transitioning:
"Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy."—Camille Paglia
Basically, being a man—like growing old—ain't for sissies...
"I am no longer in the warmth of that cradle." Living, as I do, in the dumpster side of the dump city, Bridgeport, I am subjected to a lot of those overgrown babies with their passive-aggressive hopped-up, loud muscle cars driving outside my (and everyone else unfortunate enough to live close to the street) window. I guess their thinking (to the limited extent they do so) is something like, "If I'm miserable then everyone around me is going to have to be miserable, too." As they rev their engine in infantile frustration yet again. It is hard (I sometimes tell myself) being, as they are, a two year old trapped in an adult body
To my great good fortune I got accepted into a "senior living" home in Hamden. Yes, I'm finally going to the "old folk's home." It is off the street; way off the street which is quiet anyway, so no more loud idiots driving by with their car stereos blasting; no more half-wit housemates who are perpetually in a bad mood because they don't have their mother's tit to suck on anymore nor their cradle to lie in with their warm blanky to provide comfort; they actually have to live life as an adult. How miserable is that? No wonder they are in a perpetual bad mood.
No more of that (for me). Good riddance to all the idiots, half-wits, morons and dick faces. I can now just be left alone to watch the sun shine, the rain fall and the New England seasons come and go. Thank you God or whoever helped me escape this sh*t hole. (See, Trump was right about something; only he was wrong in thinking such places are all in the Third World. Some are right here. Right now.)
I'm happy for you to be able to live in peace. So unbelievably hot here in Sacramento this summer. Another 104 degree day today!
Thank you, Peggy.
Yes, I've heard Sacto has been hellishly hot this summer. When I lived there the meteorological data said we averaged 18 days a year at or above 100 degrees F. I was looking at the Sacramento data for this summer and it seemed like you had already had a two week period in July with 14 days above 100 with who knows how many more 100 plus days coming in August and September (and even early October can be witheringly hot).
It has been brutally hot here in coastal Connecticut for the second consecutive summer with many days at or slightly above 90 degrees F. I've mentioned before when I was growing up here in the 1960s and 70s if it approached 88 or even 90 degrees perhaps once every five or six years that was a big deal.
My new place has AC and though I'm not a big user of AC there are days when a little air conditioning can stand between oneself and heat stroke, particular as I get older.
PS. I haven't heard (no emails) from my old friend in Sacramento in months now. I'm afraid he may have succumbed to the heat or who knows what? His health had been precarious for years (he suffered from what I think was a type of muscular-dystrophy, although he never talked about it and, out of politeness I never inquired). I wish he would send me an email. I don't like to bother him because he is (like me) very reclusive. He lives over by Sac. State just south of the American River in a public housing complex (can't remember the name of it). About 15 or 17 years ago he was "jumped" while walking home from work and beaten pretty badly. I'm afraid the lingering effect of that combined with his overall poor health might be catching up with him.
Perfect summing up of our day... most can't be bothered to read actual words put to paper by real intelligence, and not the dreadful, "artificial" kind (or even just bytes translating ones-and-zeroes on flickering screens - which I dislike, why I hate e-books).
Add to this the non-teaching of script writing ("cursive" is what they call it, I hear) in school, so younger people will now be unable to read beautiful, human, hand-written documents from the past.
Hi Teresa,
Regarding cursive, you can see 62-year-old Blinken's here:
http://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2024/07/blinken-at-home-of-late-president-of.html
He can't even manage the first letter of the alphabet!
Linh
forgot to dot the "i" in built so it's now "butt"
Shame on him! He's of a generation that was still taught proper penmanship in school - except that, teachers were already becoming lax by then!
Thinking back at my youth, it is hard for me to imagine now that Johnny Carson had Gore Vidal substitute host the Tonight Show.
Even if I knew very few people who read, serious writers were part of the culture. Even some poets like Frost, Sandberg and Auden were on the fringes of mainstream culture.
Fortunately we still have semi literate rappers to carry on that literary tradition.
Mr. Vidal, along with the equally erudite Chris Hedges, were perhaps the only two American public intellectuals to speak out against America's misguided involvement in (invasion of) Iraq in 2003. Both men were (and thank heavens Mr. Hedges is still with us) towering intellects supported by unwavering moral cores.
Mr. Vidal was a well-know bisexual at a time when that was absolutely unacceptable in America. His second novel "The City and the Pillar" was an unprecedentedly frank examination of a homoerotic relationship when such things were simply not discussed in America. He was advised at the time that that book's publication would destroy his writing career before it had even started. It did not.
Unlike some more opportunistic public intellectual figures (I'm thinking in particular of Noam Chomsky, Steve Pinker and the late [British] Christopher Hitchens) Vidal and Hedges never cared which way the public sentiment wind was blowing at any particular time but rather always remained true to their moral core beliefs.
Vidal's greatest writing (in my constrained opinion) were not his novels (although "Julian" the novel about the apostate Roman emperor who wanted to return the pagan religion to Rome and end what he saw as the enervating influence of Christianity was very good especially in its historical understanding. Vidal had a gift for bringing history to life in his historical novels some of them about early U.S. history such as "Lincoln." If it can still be found anywhere). His greatest, most insightful writing was a series of essays he wrote for "The Nation" magazine in the 1980s and 90s under the encouragement of that magazine's then publisher Victor Navasky. Again, in my opinion no one understood U.S. society with the depth and insight of Vidal. He grew up in a Washington D.C. insider family. His mother's father was a U.S. senator from Oklahoma and as a boy Vidal would frequently accompany his blind grandfather into the Senate. And despite Vidal's privileged background, instead of retreating into the comforts of upper class America, he relentlessly stood up for, and on behalf of, the common people of America.
Two great and outstanding men. Two great Americans. One still with us. One not. Rest in peace, Gore Vidal. America thanks you for your great service. (At least this one does.)
PS. Vidal, in one of his two final memoirs (he refused to write an autobiography) admitted to being a good friend to Johnny Carson. Vidal recounted an episode when he and Mr. Carson were drinking a good quantity of beer on Mr. Vidal's balcony at Vidal's villa in Italy on the Amalfi coast south of Naples while Mr. Carson's wife, exhausted from the flight over, slept inside. It was a funny story.
Seems there's nought but material gals left in this world. Madonna's work here is done. Blessed be her (their?) name.
Howdy, Linh. Its hardly an original thought, but in our global society we are all poseurs these days. Ted Kaczynski may have been MK-Ultra batshit crazy, but his observation about being 'oversocialized' was spot on.
Ted Kaczynski was said to have an I.Q. in the 170+ range. He was a professor of mathematics at U.C. Berkeley while just in his 20s. His manifesto, dubbed "the Uni-bomber Manifesto" made a lot of sense at least to some people who have bothered to peruse it.
He apparently was an unfortunate, very unfortunate, victim of the MK Ultra program when still a young man. This is what America does to some of its most talented young people ultimately driving Kaczynski to suicide. What a waste of an exceptional mind. But than, generally speaking, America never needed exceptional minds. It just wants people who show up for work on time and can endure the tedium and monotony of mindless drudgery eight hours a day five or six days a week. Smart people (like Kaczynski) ask too many uncomfortable questions.
Blessedly, I have never heard of Aya Nakamura.
Wow LD, showing off your lit chops in that essay. I can't hold a candle. Reading Borges just makes me feel incredibly stupid. But I share with you a love for jazz.
Hi Jimbob,
In this article about being drugged and robbed, I discuss a Borges story:
https://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2023/05/drugged-robbed-but-not-knifed.html
And here's a photo of a Borges book:
http://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2020/07/historia-universal-de-la-infamia-busan.html
His widow has wrecked his legacy in English. Stay away from Norton editions of his work. Search here for translations that Borges approved or even collaborated with:
https://www.libgen.is/
Linh
Anyone feel like Wallace's dog today?
You in the bottom cage. Don't bark, Don't bitch, Don't bite. Be a good dog.
False american dreams and promises flutters out back.
Politicians on top, nothing better to do on a fine morning than take the natural position for the great flush, you're in the way bitch, get out of the way!
Israeli camera-men, production crews, and cheap money crowd the remaining scenery, unseen by present viewing angle.
You may be wondering why there are big jugs of water on your cage...
Well, may they at least have the decency to call it rain.
And hey, this is not abuse! The politician is never in the cage. Hence no abuse is to be found present.
And for you bitches who think otherwise, there is harsh forms of censorship present and available to drown you out.
There is no way of knowing how many people noticed the joke, but on a long-ago Simpsons episode there was outside a bookstore a sign that read "Michener $1.99/lb."
The great Luc Sante has transitioned as well:
https://www.upstatediary.com/lucy-sante
Read this great piece on Warhol when you get a chance:
https://archive.ph/zNQX7
Reading that Luc/y Sante interview, the below came to mind for whatever reason. It made me wonder to what degree becoming sick of/exhausted with life as an "anguished exile" factors into (particularly older) men transitioning:
"Men know they are sexual exiles. They wander the earth seeking satisfaction, craving and despising, never content. There is nothing in that anguished motion for women to envy."—Camille Paglia
Basically, being a man—like growing old—ain't for sissies...