A Thirster in Cuba

slide show: hover mouse

Thirsters host Dr. Art Kohn, peppered his presentation with modest caveats, reminding us he was learning more than teaching about his topic. However, with memories of his visit to Havana still vivid, he was up for giving us his eye-witness account. The interest level was high with many attending, including Jonathan Potkin.

Cuba was in crisis around now because the District of Columbia had imprisoned the president and first lady of Venezuela, whom we don't hear about daily as one might expect, and Marco Rubio (the District president) is making sure VZ is no longer in control of where its oil goes. That oil now belongs to the District as far as the Beltway Mafia is concerned, and Cuba has long been on its enemies list.

However, US citizens are still permitted tourist visas and short hop airlines that don't need to refuel in Havana still serve its airport. 

Art is a big fan of AI and used it to help with the slideshow, which took us through a lot of history, albeit briefly as this was but a two-hour long meetup at best. 

I'd arrived with two guests, Don and Susan, having enjoyed their company, and Terri's, at their home base first. I was their driver / chauffeur for the evening. Don enjoyed the freeway twists and dips, which we took much faster coming home, in light traffic.

After the formal presentation, Thirsters (a pun on Thursday beer drinking, recalling our pub meetup years) asked questions and shared views.

Art's mental model is that a public-ownership-based framework equates to a top-heavy bureaucracy and a kind of egalitarianism that keeps the gap in living standards, between the best-off and worst-off, relatively narrow, but also keeps that living standard relatively low for everyone, on average. 

Private ownership, on the other hand, which encourages competition, and a leaner government, opens the door to a higher top level standard, thanks to greater efficiency, but at the cost of a wider disparity in living standards. One might picture the two bell curves.

I shared one of my Cuba stories, the one about my friend who organized trips to Cuba for retired Pentagon brass, for fun in the sun and meetups with Castro. I thought about getting into the whole Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory scenario, but decided that was too complicated a kind of science fiction to pass off as a quick anecdote.

In the car driving home I shared my view that the District is at the hub of a military-socialist empire, centered around the Pentagon as a central planner. Between corporate hierarchies, flock-n-shepherd temples, and military service, US citizens have little opportunity to practice boots-on-the-ground democracy except vs-a-vs the District melodrama, which turns "democracy" into a kind of reality TV show.

Note that USers are by now used to having the Secretary of State be president, as this was true under President Blinken as well.

Marking Time

I might write a movie review for The Apostle, a Robert Duvall film. Rosalie mentioned liking it. I grabbed a copy from Movie Madness around the time news of Duvall’s death was percolating through social media. He plays a preacher really not well suited for anything else, except fixing cars.

There’s a pall across the land, a sense of deadness, as people come to grips with (a) having no leadership and (b) the prospect of an all-out brawl in the Middle East for no coherent reason other than tempers are running high. No cold calculations suggest spazzing out would be productive, but who coldly calculates anymore?

I woke up feeling a bit on the woozy side, and I’m not blaming Duvall. Even this many hours later, I don’t think I’m at 100%. Something I ate maybe; either the oyster stew or the juicer carrots.

Is this just a boring journal, like a diary, where I write about diet and flatulence (thinking of Darwin, sorry)? I’d say it’s not just that, but I do want to keep it quirkily individual, clearly written by a human and not some bot. It’s getting hard to tell anymore.

My line on AI is that “artificial intelligence” has always been with us. You’ll get that from other thinkers besides me. Improved intelligence is a direction, and means a lot of things, where “artificial” or “phony” is the other direction, pretending we have just the two (an oversimplification in other words).

More sense vs less sense: as much as some are concentrating and curating sense, so are others maybe squandering it, and maybe that’s fine. 

Housecleaning matters. Old, obsolete belief systems needn’t be kept “alive” on life support. There comes a point where suspending disbelief becomes impossible. Beliefs can’t be forced, which is why we have the words “persuaded” and “convinced”. Sure, one might feign beliefs, to get ahead in the party, but if they feel forced upon one, or from one, then they’re experienced as inauthentic, insincere, and therefore prone to crumble, dust to dust.

The veggie heads (those with no brains left, heads stuffed with straw, alas) tend to stumble towards war in hopes of that making more sense somehow. They’re drawn to the flames by their sense of what’s needed: more intel. 

The zombie trope is likewise nothing new. In a way, we’re all on the same page.

Acting Locally

This journal entry will focus on mundane matters of immediate circumstance, such as the loud noises from the construction site, which set Ruby aquiver, and an ask to be held in her guardian’s arms, Mazur, visiting from out-of-state (more northward in Cascadia). 

Speaking of Cascadia, we’re proud of our football-oriented subculture obviously, for winning that trophy. Meanwhile, the Winter Olympics in Italy has some friends fully engaged. I’m more asynchronous around sporting events these days, although I was watching NFL Seahawks vs Patriots in real time, with Mazur, Ruby and friends. Some friends were betting money, but not through any app.

Ruby is a cha-weenie if I remember correctly, a chihauhua-dachshund. I grew up around dachshunds, then later switched to chocolate lab (Sydney) and lab-adjacent (yellowish Sarah Angel).

The construction site in question already has an open food cart, more at the ready, while they finish the grange (I’ll call it) where you might bring your food to an indoor table. Restrooms. A beverage bar. 

This has proved a winning formula around Portland. The food truck pod is an institution, prototypical of traveling circus havens in other forms, ala the Earthala Project (ongoing terraforming). The trucks typically intend to stay awhile, but they’re also free to come and go. The pod provides a hookup, including to a metered gas line in some cases.

The food pod in question is at the corner of SE 38th and Division, adjacent to Tom’s on Chavez. We were on our way to Tropical Hut, past Village Merchant and Skavones. This was a mouse Monday for Barry (the ball python in my Photostream, inherited from my then off-to-college daughter (Barry may outlive me; snakes have a long lifespan)).

Earlier, before the mouse trip (about a mile total?), before Dave came over (he hadn’t watched the Super Bowl at all the day before), the fuel truck had arrived as expected. The operator and I stood around yakking while the truck pumped an already set number of gallons, cheque written already. 

I’d let the tank run out, whereas I thought I was on top of it, having measured the fuel level recently enough, I thought. Since Friday the house had been hovering at an ambient temperature more reflective of outside weather conditions, whereas I usually keep the thermostat at 60F, and the basement furnace complies, but only because there’s still fuel in the pipeline. 

The operator relayed what he considered a consensus view of the truck diver community: they appreciate Cascadia (Pacific Northwest) as an agreeable part of the country. Truckers enjoy driving through here more than average. However settling here, making it a base, has become more difficult, as a lot of people have that same idea, bidding up the cost of property (stuff).

Our neighborhood housing market seems robust, even when they tell us downtown office building occupancy is relatively low. They’ve also decided there’s no way to rescue the Lloyd Center as is, a signature shopping mall in the minds of long term residents. I learned of that decision through a KOIN posting on Facebook. 

I do receive broadcast television through an antenna, and of course I get TV through my internet hookup (optical fiber). 

I don’t get any cable TV outside of what I get through my internet subscription.

Coming back from the mouse store, we came upon one of those bird-house on a pole looking free libraries. Take a book, donate a book… I took out a thick one on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life. I hope to be visiting his grandson later this week. 

Later when back at the house, I passed on to Mazur my hardcover David Bowie book (purchased from the local Powell’s) as I’ve always associated her with David Bowie, of whom she’s been a fan.

The Videodrome (movie review)

You might imagine I’d seen this by now, or at least heard of it. Why? Because I extol eXistenZ, another Crononberg film that came out around the same time as The Matrix, and received less notice. 

Coming from that background, of having seen eXistenZ more than once, you’ll appreciate how much I found The Videodrome (another “The” movie, like a noir) to be its precursor. 

I’m sure critics have already gone to town with the observation, cashed it in so to speak, but to me, a recent initiate, it’s all new. I haven’t read what the critics say nor consulted Perplexity regarding this film. I was blindsided, as they say.

The Criterion Collection 2nd disc (this was from MMU) contains a lengthy (23 min) panel discussion in which Cronenberg and a couple other directors have a moderated panel discussion of the MAA’s movie rating system: G, PG, R, and X. Quite a bit has changed since then. 

Cronenberg, from Canada, with even harsher UK-based censorship, was pushing for a rating between PG and R (right?) and since then we’ve seen TV14 appear. Also, X is now MA (Mature Audiences).

The Videodrome is talking about viewer-voyeurism, how the observer is drawn in, in this case Civic TV, a “small station” i.e. literally a “little me everyone” (meaning “Everyman” in the language of Chaucer — in the namespace of learning about Chaucer & Co. in a school setting, I shoulda said). 

Everyman can’t take his eyes away from the public hanging or guillotine extravaganza or whatever it is, and this satellite TV show outta Malaysia (not slander, no worries — later Pittsburgh is revealed to be the true source (a spoiler)) is gonna be a likely hit on Civic TV, which specializes in the lurid tabloid stuff that makes money on Times Square (which has done much to clean up its image of late).

I loved the “subterranean lady” character, who still makes old-fashioned X-rated stuff, almost Victorian peep show in its naïveté. Civic TV wants more raw violence, forget the sex stuff. American Psycho might be just around the corner, stealing market share. I’d been on a Christian Bale kick earlier.

Why I liked watching this movie in the sequence I’ve been following, meaning earlier noirs (The Glass Key and The Hidden Room most recently), is partly the sense of continuity I experienced. 

The viewer-voyeur (the average tax-paying voter) is being taken by the TV into the smarmy underground of hinted-at perversions and occult rituals, very Epstein. Telegenic televangelists rule somehow, in this newly emergent Donahue-Oprah world, where we get more of a look at everywoman (Everyman is all-genders, partly why he went out of style, for sounding too gender-definitive).

I can hear the lawyers now (figuratively, not “voices” no): ear piercing is the everyday business of cosmetology shops the world over, so trying to sexualize the process in erotic comedy (a serious scene judging by lighting) won’t get us an X, how could it?  We’re not showing more than you’d see at an everyday tattoo parlor (sorry, body art shop). 

The rules are clear (but they’re not, that’s the whole fun of it if you’re making horror films).

The lawyers are doing a lot of such thinking actually: acted-out violence for real crosses a line that grainy documentary-style violence allows, and considers important for propaganda purposes, the MAA allows it; so keep all the worst violence on television, and have viewers viewing it for context. 

And when real blood and guts are involved (another line crossed?), have it all pour directly from a television, like in that Frank Zappa number. Use actual sheep guts (I thought the other guy said pig). 

When we get to the ear piercing, we’re talking of-age, consenting adults, obviously, so that part is PG. Teens get their ears pierced all the time.

I’m reminded of Victorian times when, they say, curvaceous pianos needed ankle covers because Everyman was trying to stay focused and didn’t need the piano writhing like some TV console, in sexual ecstasy or whatever it was, especially during a concert with polite company present. Hallucinations might mean brain tumor, as we all know. So cover up those piano ankles already.

The “eye of the beholder” is hard to capture, as it’s the one doing the beholding, but this film does a good job. It makes Mr. Civic TV be an alert, intelligent businessman, someone women find attractive. Everyman can identify. He’s like a Neo. The well-worn formulae remain intact and the movie makes money at the box office, as it’s supposed to.

Syn-U Faculty Lounge