Forgetting

     My mother's mother, near a late stage of her elderly life, didn't recognize my mother; had recognized her the previous visit.  

     A willful blindness may explain some in the news media profession not acknowledging President Biden's obvious senility.  Anyone who has lived with an elderly person, a parent, perhaps, who gradually loses more memory until they just have the past, should recognize Biden's symptoms:

     Absent-mindedness.  Brain fog.  Doesn't know where to go after making a speech, walks with lower arms projected before his body.  Sudden bursts of anger.  Clumsiness.    

     Philip K. Dick's 1964 novel, The Simulacra, has a U.S. President character and his very popular First Lady Nicole.  She's a telegenic personality, people tune in to watching Nicole, they never miss a Nicole broadcast.  A jug-playing duo join with a talent show the first prize of which is the chance to meet and play their jugs before Nicole.  The President, who the nation sees on occasional television broadcasts, is an android, while the real President is a sick old man who no longer runs anything.  In the novel there's a funny character named Chic Strikerock.  Dick never writes his name in a singular way, it's always "Chic Strikerock said," or "Chic Strikerock grated."  To grate, have an irritating effect, appears throughout Dick's novels and stories.

     The "Are We a Simulation" question takes new data, that U.S. forces, as in combat troops, are joining with other NATO forces to fight in Ukraine against Russian soldiers.  Okay, why don't we get to vote on this?  A plea for democracy.  Just because Risk is a fun game to play if you can find two more people to play it with, doesn't mean it's responsible and adult to play it for real on fields where the Soviet Army battled the Wehrmacht. 

     Meanwhile, Kamala Harris went to New Mexico to discuss the reproductive rights her Party failed to codify into law during four Democratic administrations, including hers.  Oh, and get this, she'll also "be making remarks at a finance event."  Fundraising?  Is she raising money for a Presidential race?  2024?  May I, like Dick Morris, speculate about such a juicy tidbit?  

     Morris wrote a book, hyping it on Fox and MSNBC, predicting Hillary Clinton would face Condoleezza Rice in the 2008 Presidential Election.  He got the sexes wrong, but really I think Dick Morris needed some thousands of dollars so he wrote a ridiculous book the premise of which would raise eyebrows, he has news media contacts, political contacts, he can sell the book, make a little bread, a wee bit of scratch to help him through a tough coming winter of no television appearances until he writes another book, getting a prediction wrong again, because that's what Dick Morris is, a man with no scruples.

     Still, his fantasy of a Rice-Clinton showdown is interesting to think about.  Condoleezza Rice has no charisma.  I saw her on The Daily Show.  For some reason the host (Jon Stewart or someone else) mentioned her interest in the music of Cream.  She said she listened to them in college and still enjoyed their music.  Fair enough, I like Cream, too, especially "Badge."  The host then had the booth play a Cream song, then Condi would identify it.  "Sunshine of Your Love," Jack Bruce's distinctive bass line of that song an immediate giveaway.  There was one other or maybe two other songs the former Secretary of State had to identify before she could leave.  Jon Stewart, or whichever host, applied the same technique used in American war films, such as when a soldier asks a suspect soldier from another unit if he knows who won the 1938 World Series.

     "Madame Secretary, thank you for exhibiting basic knowledge of three songs by defunct supergroup, Cream!"

     Elon Musk in an interview in front of an audience said he thinks a lot about how we may be in a simulation.  "I think about it a lot."  

     Could we live on Middle-earth?  Join in with the time of the War of the Ring?  Which side will Sauron pick?  We need his formidable Orc forces.  Or do we?  What about light and good?  The Kingship or Democracy is at stake, though!  

     King Joe Theoden, revivify!  Roll him out when needed, give the rest to First Lady Nicole.

     Belief in The Lord of the Rings:

     Elbereth, or Varda, Queen of Heaven, wife of the far-seeing Manwë, the Valar act like Olympian gods and goddesses, their remote world far from concerns of Middle-earth, except that Manwë, Ulmo, Nienna and Varda love Middle-earth, their long-ago creation, their joy, destroyed by the rebellious Vala, Melkor, who earned the name Morgoth, "Dark Enemy."  The Valar, emanations from the mind of Eru, live a seemingly timeless life.  Six days in Valinor is nine months in Middle-earth, a ratio I make up here, but essentially true.  

     The Rings of Power series on Amazon received harsh criticisms from reliable observers of popular culture and critics who don't work for corporate Hollywood.  The critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes made it seem as if the series is the best thing since "A House Divided," the 1980 cliffhanger episode of Dallas when J.R. Ewing gets shot.  And the writers of the Rings show don't write anywhere near as well as 1970s TV drama writers.  

     The series took a beloved character, Galadriel, the Lady of Lothlorien, and turned her into an irritable cunt.  How it's possible to destroy such a great character, replacing her with a horrible, unlikable elf woman whose nose twitched in one scene when she was mad, shows the shallowness of our culture, its depths easily digestible in the form of Ken Burns documentaries.  

     Tolkien overmasters this whole situation.  The weight of two novels and a book of interconnected tales, offering background to the novels, amounts to the main body of his achievement.  Those works, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, hold us now with their narratives, their scenes and symbols, individual moments standing out, different from one reader to the next.  

     Could Elon Musk be developing a Simulator?  He and whoever he wants to go with him, enter a simulation the size of a pea on the outside, painted green, too.  Inside, Musk is on Mars, it's terraformed, synthetically grown human males and females work the fields, perform domestic labor inside Musk's sprawling ranch. 

     The pea-sized Simulator, shot from a space cannon in the direction of where Triton will be in five months, contains just the first chapter of Musk's goal to colonize the Solar System, the Galaxy, even.

     Let's all take a deep breath.

Vic Neptune  

     

     

It's Okay That I Can't Remember What I Was Just Thinking About

      In 1998 I visited, along with my girlfriend, her brother and his wife.  They lived in Iron Mountain, Michigan.  Henry Ford had something to do with that town.  Her brother and I sat in the front two seats of his family van.  As he drove, he told me about Henry Ford's presence, or at least his business concern, in this area of Upper Michigan, a place of woods, cliffs, owls, and trees.  Fog that day during this drive in the vicinity of Iron Mountain.  I remember what my girlfriend told me one winter day as we walked Iron Mountain's streets on a later trip.  Snow piled high, all sidewalks covered, but the streets had been cleared.  Our boots made sharp crunching sounds in the dry endless blue sky air.  She explained that in Iron Mountain they don't shovel their sidewalks.  Why?  Because, according to her, they get so much snow there's no point in bothering with it.  I happen to know this is only part of it.  The pleasure in their minds at not having to contemplate shoveling, being cold, suffering a backache, sits comfortably with them.  That neighbors and city officials themselves don't have a problem with citizens not clearing off their sidewalks must resonate with everyone who doesn't have to shovel snow due to an agreement arrived at...when?  I didn't ask my girlfriend the answer to the question.  Henry Ford, maybe, got it going.  

     On that drive, her brother passed through Felch Township.  Yes, lovers of dirty slang, you read that right.  Felch Township, population 752.

     I say "Sir" and "Ma'am" a lot in public places because I've worked in the service industry for many years in a few different jobs: grocery store, library, museum, charities phone caller.  Appear polite and attentive to others, selfless, neat, with polished shoes or at least clean new Nikes.  Make sure the tie is on tight against your neck.  No more brilliant policy than making people who must do manual labor wear ties.

Name tags: Hi, I'm Vic! read one I had to wear for a restaurant job.

     I've been through many towns: Salt Lake City, saw the Mormon Tabernacle, quite spectacular at night.  I've been through Felch Township, saw trees, mist, a gas station, houses, cars, wet road.

     Henry Ford chose this area as a place to make cars.  Big snowfalls each winter, cold and damp in other parts of the year, hot and humid in summer sometimes, deer ticks, ants, metal ore under the pine needle-covered ground.  

     I want to travel to Antarctica, step foot there, get it out of the way for obscure places to visit, like Labrador, the remote Canadian province, population 26,000.  Population density very low.  

     Near Iron Mountain, the community of Norway, Michigan features a beautiful tumbling rapids, wet huge rock walls surrounding the mini-canyon as the river blasts through the middle of the town.  Lying in bed, a Norway resident would hear that river, ambient, roaring quietly.

Vic Neptune