After Friday's unexpected warmth, we're getting another small dose of late winter. And here I am, slowly coming back from the dead, again. I have to be alert and working by tomorrow, so today I'm going to clean my office and do some other housework and try to shake off all the dust I've accumulated whilst convalescing this past week. I suspect this is going to be a rambling entry, just bits and pieces of the the last few days, strays scraps of this and that.
Darren McGavin and Don Knotts, and I got the news of both on the same damn day. The icons of my childhood are perishing all about me.
Have I done anything in the last few days worth reporting? Not really. Lots of reading, though not as much as I would have liked. Tuesday night, we watched Hal Hartley's Amateur (1994), which I'd never seen before and liked a great deal. Last night, we watched Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956), which is a favourite of mine, but which I'd never seen on DVD, and now it has me wanting to see Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo (1990) again. And we've seen a great deal of the Olympics. I was pulling hard for Irina Slutskaya, but was still very pleased to see the gold go to Shizuka Arakawa. Yesterday, I dug out some old video that was shot in September 1999 at the water works tunnel in Birmingham for an aborted Tales of Pain and Wonder documentary. And that was very strange, watching the me of seven years ago (even though it hardly seems like seven years). That was the month before Spooky came to stay with me for the first time. Anyway, then we dug out another, older tape, a NYC public access TV interview I did in May 1998, the night that
faustfatale and I had our joint book-release party at Mother. docbrite was there, as well, perhaps the only time that the three of us have ever been in NYC at the same time. That was even weirder, the me of almost eight years ago looking back at me. There's some older video around here somewhere, a bunch of Death's Little Sister stuff from '96-'97, and one very old tape of me lip-syncing Kate Bush which dates back to '93 or '94. I don't think I have the nerve for that just yet. I should have all this crap dumped onto DVD and let Bill Schafer give it away with some subpress book or another. That would be a scream. Or something.
And yesterday the Earth's human population hit 6.5 billion, which is three and one half times the size it was at the beginning of the 20th Century and at least a third again what it was when I was in junior high in the mid '70s and first began to think about such things. Someone's bound to say that's just fine and dandy, the more the merrier, bring 'em on and never mind a planet's carrying capacity or biological diversity. Me, I just don't find Homo sapiens sapiens quite that goddamn wonderful. Wouldn't a billion be just fine? Just one billion? I'd gladly trade 5.5 billion humans for a few more tigers (<5,000 remaining in the wild), elephants (approx. 40,000), polar bears (approx. 22,000), or northern right whales (<400). Or how about trading a measly 1 billion humans for 1 billion acres of rain forest and another 1 billion for a billion acres of wetlands? That sounds fairer than fair. But I'm sure that's just me, and, having given up my status as human some time ago, I'm probably not technically allowed a voice in such matters, anyway. You might as well let dolphins and tuna and dodos vote! 6.5 billion human beings. Jesus. I think I'm going to go try and calculate just how much solid waste 6.5 billion human beings shit out in a single day...
Perhaps I'll post the results later.
Darren McGavin and Don Knotts, and I got the news of both on the same damn day. The icons of my childhood are perishing all about me.
Have I done anything in the last few days worth reporting? Not really. Lots of reading, though not as much as I would have liked. Tuesday night, we watched Hal Hartley's Amateur (1994), which I'd never seen before and liked a great deal. Last night, we watched Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956), which is a favourite of mine, but which I'd never seen on DVD, and now it has me wanting to see Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo (1990) again. And we've seen a great deal of the Olympics. I was pulling hard for Irina Slutskaya, but was still very pleased to see the gold go to Shizuka Arakawa. Yesterday, I dug out some old video that was shot in September 1999 at the water works tunnel in Birmingham for an aborted Tales of Pain and Wonder documentary. And that was very strange, watching the me of seven years ago (even though it hardly seems like seven years). That was the month before Spooky came to stay with me for the first time. Anyway, then we dug out another, older tape, a NYC public access TV interview I did in May 1998, the night that
faustfatale and I had our joint book-release party at Mother. docbrite was there, as well, perhaps the only time that the three of us have ever been in NYC at the same time. That was even weirder, the me of almost eight years ago looking back at me. There's some older video around here somewhere, a bunch of Death's Little Sister stuff from '96-'97, and one very old tape of me lip-syncing Kate Bush which dates back to '93 or '94. I don't think I have the nerve for that just yet. I should have all this crap dumped onto DVD and let Bill Schafer give it away with some subpress book or another. That would be a scream. Or something.And yesterday the Earth's human population hit 6.5 billion, which is three and one half times the size it was at the beginning of the 20th Century and at least a third again what it was when I was in junior high in the mid '70s and first began to think about such things. Someone's bound to say that's just fine and dandy, the more the merrier, bring 'em on and never mind a planet's carrying capacity or biological diversity. Me, I just don't find Homo sapiens sapiens quite that goddamn wonderful. Wouldn't a billion be just fine? Just one billion? I'd gladly trade 5.5 billion humans for a few more tigers (<5,000 remaining in the wild), elephants (approx. 40,000), polar bears (approx. 22,000), or northern right whales (<400). Or how about trading a measly 1 billion humans for 1 billion acres of rain forest and another 1 billion for a billion acres of wetlands? That sounds fairer than fair. But I'm sure that's just me, and, having given up my status as human some time ago, I'm probably not technically allowed a voice in such matters, anyway. You might as well let dolphins and tuna and dodos vote! 6.5 billion human beings. Jesus. I think I'm going to go try and calculate just how much solid waste 6.5 billion human beings shit out in a single day...
Perhaps I'll post the results later.
- Current Mood:
pissed off, but what's new? - Current Music:T-Rex, "Children of the Revolution"
Comments
Is this material that is ever likely to be released (as you have discussed a Daughter of Hounds documentary, for example) or is it pretty definitively off-limits?
a bunch of Death's Little Sister stuff from '96-'97
That would be worth hearing.
Well, considering that I once swore I'd never allow The Five of Cups to be published, I never say never about these things anymore.
Like I said, maybe a DVD from subpress someday.
And yes, I'm up for trading a billion humans for some more rainforest, wetlands, farmland, forests, whatever. We're in danger of losing part of the Hoosier National Forest .
It's doubled since the mid 70s? Oh jeez. So that's why we're being invaded by all these plastic-clad slab homes eating up space where there used to be woodlands. And what's scarier is you know the segment of humans that seem to be breeding the most aren't exactly the best and brightest.
No. I think it's gone up by about 1/3rd since the '70s. I shall check. Not that a third isn't horrifying enough...
Not a chance. The worst natural pandemic could hardly put a dent in 6.5 billion. At this point, it would take global nuclear or biological warfare or a large asteroid impact to make any significant dent (a dent in the billions) in the bloated population. Of course, those things would also take out much of the already human-ravaged biosphere.
Where's Soylent Green when you need it?
That's...just...fucked. I mean, really. 12 children. 20 grandchildren. Why?
Where's Soylent Green when you need it?
I always imagined it would taste like rice cakes.
Fear of having time for a single coherent thought, perhaps.
I always imagined it would taste like rice cakes.
Heh. The article I linked to doesn't have any good photos, but the woman actually looks kind of like a scary rice golem.
I looked at the story about the 62 year old mom and noticed she's on husband #3. Does she wear them out?
I'm with you completely though about trading... thing is the world will eventually take care of that on it's own. We've been here for such a minute blip on the earth's timeline, and I don't get the feeling that in the long run we'll be half as enduring through the millenia as say, the sea turtle. Much like any relationship, both sides have to provide ~ it can't just be the earth giving and humans taking.
I try to take solace in this fact and hope that there will still be sea turtles left when the hoomans are finally done and extinct and quietly fossilizing. Or have at least been reduced to a reasonable component of the terran fauna. I would take much less issue with a human population of, oh, let's say a hundred million or so...
Much like any relationship, both sides have to provide ~ it can't just be the earth giving and humans taking.
Hoomans are sort of like a particularly abusive boyfriend (or girlfiend), in that respect. :)
but as I was taking my inhalers today at my mother's house, she said they're going to stop making inhalers entirely, because we asthmatics are punching holes in the ozone layer with the things.
Right. It isn't fossil fuel usage. It's the damned asthmatics and farting cows.
Then again, perhaps some of us are trying to evolve, and the rest are still screaming, "nooo! think of the children!" Which is, rather, the point. :>