Good morning. Hello How are you? #372
Three million COVID deaths, Fears of a Setting Sun, Aging VFX as a metaphor for language. And a little bit of gardening.
Good morning! Hello! How are you, today? It’s Monday, is that bothering you in any way? Or is that just a thing for me and Garfield. Man. Garfield. Who knew. He was on to something. Still think lasagna isn’t *that* good, though. But, then, I only tolerate marinara sauce. Never been a big fan.
We passed a milestone I didn’t see mentioned anywhere (though to be fair I did not read a lot of news and commentary this weekend). Every day at the start my my 750 words I run through a bunch of stats: a lot of work things related to my job, my weight and every day still, I review all of the stats around the pandemic: how many people have gotten it or died in my county, state, country, on the planet. It’s a little ritual. It helps me not forget what’s happening, even when I have a great, blissfully ignorant day. This is either virtuous or self-incficting, I don’t know which.
And Saturday, right after I finished writing to you, I learned that three million people worldwide have died of COVID-19 and its variants. That is just… astonishing. Remember all the comparisons to the flu? On the high end, the flu kills 500,000 people worldwide every year. It’s…well, it’s fucking horrible is what it is. No way to cut it. And there’s the good ole US of A – 4% of the world’s population with 16% of its COVID deaths. USA! USA!
Speaking of which, finished my book last night, Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders by Dennis Rasmussen. That was a good, depressing read. Basically none of our founding fathers with the exception of James Madison were happy with the way the country turned out, and had very little hope for it to last. A big, though not the only, part of that was slavery of course. They were also disappointed with factionalism. A surprising number of them were disappointed with how greedy and lazy and uneducated Americans had become. One thing I thought was interesting was that none of them were annoyed with just how very drunk America was. It’s been years since I read it, but The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition by W.J. Rorabaugh was a rousing read. Really is astonishing just how much booze Americans drank. No wonder Washington, Adams, Hamilton and Jefferson could only agree on one thing: that Americans were basically useless. Thomas Paine was the first to lose faith, even before the constitution, really. The book sums up the end of his life: “it was no use fighting for what was obviously a lost cause. He gradually slipped into an impoverished obscurity, drinking heavily and convinced that the radical promise of the American Revolution remained unfulfilled.”
“Same,” I tweeted last night.
You get the feeling they all sensed the civil war coming round the corner. The Missouri Compromise, especially, was a big part of their disillusionment, basically no one was happy with this. It’s interesting because in a way, even though we’re still here as a country, they were very correct that the whole enterprise wasn’t going to last. Lincoln had to do all the dirty work on which they had procrastinated. Their compromises seemed clever at the time but in the end just delayed the reckoning until it could grow enough to kill a million people. It was a monumental failing. It’s kind of amazing they get any reverence at all.
Also Jefferson is such a tool. He kept calling his inauguration the “revolution of 1800” because it was when his political party beat Washington’s “policital party” — not that Washington believed in political parties or would claim to have belonged to one. He viewed his election as an absolute mandate against Washington’s Federalism. It is worth noting that he wouldn’t have even been elected without the slaves all counting as 3/5ths of a vote each for their owners. This did not disturb him in the slightest.
Anyway.
Did a ton of gardening this weekend. Went through about 20 more cubic feet of dirt. Got so much planted, though you wouldn’t know it from looking in the garage from the seed starts. It really is ridiculous. I have so many plants still. Think I’m gonna email the neighborhood today and offer up some tomato starts. Compost is still hot garbage, or, rather, not hot garbage, har har, I crack myself up. Most of the overwintered peppers seem to have failed. The carrots didn’t sprout after a week in the ground. My potting bench never showed up, the Amazon vendor lied, printed a shipping label but never shipped it, told Amazon they had, and tried to keep my money. Ordered a new one, should be here this week, but who knows. But despite these setbacks, the garden is starting to look like a garden. It really is coming along. I didn’t finish the video of it, it’s a long one, but hopefully I’ll get it done for you today so you can spend your Tuesday evening after work kicking back and watching me wash tarps and pot luffas. And bok choi, napa cabbage, two types of lettuce, blueberries, strawberries, beets, four types of beans, fennel, shishito peppers, nine types of basil and more!
Jane is in a selfie phase again, so here you go:
I leave you today with a closing thought I had about language. Let me see if I can make this make sense, since it was a new metaphor for me. You may not have heard me say this explicitly, but you could probably intuit it from my writing style, but I am not a big fan of flowery language. I’m also not a particularly reverent wielder of the language. I am totally okay with most egregious violations of the language that people like to rant about on Twitter. I think “a whole nother” is a great turn of phrase. I’m not a fan of a big word when a small word will do the trick. I like writing for flow, ease of comprehension, and clarity. Comfort. I want the reader to feel like they’re on a nice, lazy river raft trip with no complications, even when the topic at hand my be something they’re not a fan of.
I really can’t stand incomprehensible writing. I can’t stand archaic writing. I don’t want to have to work for my learning, especially when the barrier to learning is artificial and does not contribute to the comprehension. Shakespeare is a great example. Shakespeare’s stories are timeless and universal. Shakespeare’s language is a barrier. I would be 100% content to ditch it, and I would prefer a modernized adaptation over the original almost any day. It’s not such a problem when watching an actual play — takes a couple minutes to adapt but it’s fine. But in writing, it’s a perpetual barrier. And this is me talking! Someone who’s been writing his whole life, read thousands of books, did (may i say immodestly) quite well on his verbal tests back in the day (though not as good as my wife). For the average person, Shakespeare’s diction is a monumental, pointless, stupid barrier to learning the stories: the stories that are central part of our culture. Not his words, words, words.
Anyway it occurred to me Saturday, as I was staring out the window onto the perished petals of the cherry blossom tree, that we extoll old language too much. But it’s backwards: old language should not be viewed like some important artifact in our museums. Old language should be viewed like the shitty VFX in a 1980’s movie. The 1981 Clash of the Titans is a great movie. The 1981 Clash of the Titans has shitty VFX and is a great movie despite them. Even Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. The VFX are aging. In 20 more years we’ll think “That’s a half-decent adaptation but, man, those orcs look bad.” We should appreciate older pieces of writing despite their decrepit, aged, garbage writing. It shouldn’t be a feature of it.
Well, it took three paragraphs to get that idea across, so I probably failed at the lazy river tube adventure there. Sorry. Also I should confess that the two things that, I, personally, am currently snobbish about in writing are the correct uses of em-dashes and the correct use of hyphenated words. But the latter one is pretty new and I am still bad at it. And I don’t think less of anyone for their abuse. It’s a personal, not external-facing, neurosis.
Also my god I love over-using commas.
Today’s mix is just a mix. Oh but the first two songs talk about sunshine back-to-back. That is a coincidence but I like it. Unbunny was a huge obsession of mine in the mid-90s and I have spent a good amount of time over the last year buying what little Unbunny is available on vinyl. I think I have it all now, though many of his albums, including the perfect Fission Romance the West is not available on vinyl, alas. The Andrew WK song on here is fantastic and I deeply regret not going to see him on this tour at Cat’s Cradle. That was an error on my part. And thank you Nick Laudadio for alerting me to this very good recent(ish) Alan Parsons Project album. More investigation is needed there. Are there more? I will find out. Why, yes. There seems to be one more even-more-recent album. Will check it out.
Okay, well, lots to do today. It’s good to stay busy on a Monday. And given that these days on Monday I haven’t been in front of my computer in two or three days, it’s usually no problem to find plenty to do. God, I remember those days in SoHo and Williamsburg when I used to spend the entire day Saturday or Sunday (or both!) sitting in front of the computer, catching up on emails so I wouldn’t be completely behind by the time Monday rolled around. Apologies to every ex-employee on the other end of that. No more! I am a changed man!
Talk soon!
To clarify, are you aware there are regional versions of lasagna, many of which do not contain red sauce?
To clarify, are you aware that there are many regional versions of lasagna, many of which do not contain red sauce?