Forward-Looking Me

Or at least in-the-moment me. I'm going to do a post of short takes regarding pressing current (trending?) subjects. Especially since I have some of my more typical backward-looking ones in the queue preparing to roll out.




I was going to riff on whatever was coming across my Twitter feed, but I just logged on and someone is talking about what is the best Shakespeare play. Well, I can start with that. The best play is obviously Hamlet, right? All of those big tragedies would take up the "best" spots mostly. My favorites, meaning those I derived the most spontaneous enjoyment from reading, would be something like 1. Henry the Fourth I, 2. Antony and Cleopatra, 3. Julius Caesar, 4. Romeo and Juliet, 5. tie between Hamlet and As You Like It.


If called upon to give an unplanned 18-minute TED talk, what would you discuss? I don't know about anything that is up to date enough to interest a professional audience, so I would probably just talk about some the neglected American Literature of the period between the Civil War and World War II and what arguments can be made for its relevance to the present, which is something not a lot of other people are talking about anyway, though I doubt it would go over well.




Hatred of Trump. I am as tired of talking about Trump as much as everybody else. I haven't liked him going back to the 80s--indeed I probably hated him then more than I do now, I was younger and more hopeful about things and I thought it was terrible that the media seemed to celebrate and encourage his rude and disrespectful behavior. In the present day, I don't have anywhere near the inchoate fury with regard to him that other people have for him now. This hatred in a lot of people seems to be motivated by the sense that they are morally good while he is an abomination, or that they are intelligent while he is stupid, but I am not capable of feeling indignant in this way anymore. I have theorized that the subconscious cause of a lot of this rage is that he overtly make a mockery out of so many people's lives and earnest efforts by his ridiculous successes in fields that others take very seriously and devote much of their lives to trying to have a career in, not only politics but book publishing and selling, entertainment. How many Phds toil in poverty for decades trying to land any position, while Trump founds his own "university" and has people sending him their life savings right away? For all that he is despised by multitudes of women for his appalling, unenlightened, misogynistic, gross, etc, etc, etc, he has willingly taken to bed more reasonably attractive women than the average well-intentioned male feminist or beleaguered modern liberal husband could hope to lay a finger on in a hundred lifetimes, or five hundred. I know the self-righteously angry men online, or some of them anyway, do not care about their personal inability to have sex with an army of bimbos at the drop of a hat when the scourges of sexism and patriarchy need to be opposed and defeated, and . But I'm not going to pretend that I don't care about it or take the hard cold truth into consideration. 




Somebody watching the Pretenders performing in Austin. I had their greatest hits album on cassette back in '89 or so, and it was one of the handful of albums I would listen to pretty much from beginning to end. "Kid", "Talk of the Town", I liked those songs, I'd kind of forgotten about them. I only remember being made fun of by a cool person for listening to this one time.




Somebody Supporting Julian Castro. Why? I am completely at sea on the election now. I don't know who to vote for. Even the candidates of whom I kind of like something have serious drawbacks.


I admit I didn't follow the impeachment hearings very closely. I had no interest in them, or in anything that came out in them. I guess I have to force myself to pay attention more.




Oh yes, Kamala Harris dropping out. I was never sure why anybody thought she was going to catch fire. Regular people didn't like her, there was no evidence that she even had any interest in seriously addressing the decline of the middle classes, and former middle classes of America, which for the time being is what these elections are primarily about.


I took a day off and now I'm going to give this a second try.


Guy trashing Jason Garrett's coaching and raving about the Chicago Bears' socks. I don't have anything to add to this (assuming that these are the traditional Chicago Bears' socks) although the Jason Garrett criticism is approaching the beating a dead horse phase. The Dallas Cowboys overall are the sports team I have felt the most hatred for/fear of over the course of my life, though as I approach fifty, and the eras where they loomed most menacing recede ever further into the past my capacity for that level of loathing is weakening. I still enjoy watching one game in a week when I get the chance, though.


My Friend and Sometime Reader of the Blog Gil Roth is tweeting about a new book claiming that Albert Camus was murdered by the KGB. That is a new one to me. Further emphasizes that being a serious international-level author entails a lot more than it looks like when you're a teenager thumbing through these books sitting in a plush chair in a library on a snowy day in Maine.


Death of Journalism/Learn to Code Joke. I have let some younger people into my feed. The Learn to Code meme I think is played out. What is my opinion of people in their 20s and 30s? A few of them are clever but seem aimless.  I find very few who both reveal a sense of humor/personal charm and are "serious" or accomplished in some professional or recognized way. I've known a few women from this age group--late 20s to 30s, mostly teachers or otherwise involved in children's activities--who seemed to me like they would be pretty good catches for marriage or whatever, but were single and didn't even have boyfriends as far as I know. I suppose it's possible they weren't interested in that, and we are certainly trained to assume that as the default position unless told otherwise, but I don't know, if you're 32 and working in a school in New Hampshire, making some effort to be conventionally attractive, I am guessing that they probably would like to get married at some point.


Stephen King on how the Trumpers hate the 3 million vote differential in the popular vote in 2016. I actually do not have that impression. It's the anti-Trumpers who bring it up incessantly. I am not one of these people who wants to get rid of the Electoral College. It may be an unwieldy system but we have inherited it and I think we should try to preserve our foundational institutions as long as we can until they become completely untenable. Even with the election of Trump I don't think that time has come yet.


Joe Biden Challenging an 83 year old voter to an IQ test.  Not great. There are actually several themes here related to future posts, so I will save my thoughts for that future occasion.