My mother once picked up a book called From a Certain Point of View, as a Christmas gift for me. It’s a collection of short stories set in the Star Wars universe. The book’s short stories tell the plot of Star Wars from the point of view of minor characters. For example, in the first story in the book, the captain of the escape brigade gets the point of view, which is neither the droids C-3P0’s or R2-D2’s, nor Princess Leia’s. It is the same plot as the first scene of the film.
The book is celebrating Star Wars‘ fortieth anniversary, so I am taking the understanding that the book is a 2017 volume. 2017 was the year of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.
The Last Jedi took a different point of view that was a departure from styles of the previous Star Wars films. It recreated Luke Skywalker as a figure afflicted with existential angst. The book only contains scenes from the 1977 Star Wars film with a yowl from Rogue One to begin the book.
I don’t know why I haven’t read it sooner. I think the interest in Star Wars for me returned with the Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett. Thinking about the desert planet of Tatooine through the eyes of Boba Fett got me feeling good again about Star Wars. Boba Fett’s the character whom Lord Vader used to freeze and transport Han Solo back to Tatooine, to the palace of Jabba the Hutt in the second and third movies of the original trilogy.
Star Wars is an unusual fantasy. With the film, picturing each second from these brief tales ought to be a breeze.
What’s extravagant is an incredible night’s rest, perhaps nine hours to re-energize.
Morning coffee is excellent, typically several cups. Taking a look at my YouTube menu in the morning helps shape my inner world. Watching videos, whether for entertainment, information, music, or an intersection of all these stops (!), is a great way to handle the early hours of the day.
I wouldn’t be satisfied without making time for TV entertainment. I enjoy single episodes like people would watch in the golden age of TV, before home videos and streaming video took over. I like, for example, an episode of Riverdale on the Netflix service, or another series that happens to have my fancy. While I don’t live on Netflix, I often make Netflix a go-to for streaming entertainment.
The BBC soap Eastenders has had a long, rich history going back to 1985, so I like to watch it if I want traditional television. My eighth birthday was that year, a time in life when family and friends are especially important. Since I’m now an adult and more prepared (than an eight-year-old), I appreciate following the stories in Eastenders. My rule of thumb, though, is only one episode per day.
Many days I like to put an hour into Twitter to get a fun peek at people’s hot takes and trending news. I even automate tweets, when topics I am interested in exploring come to light in the hands of capable writers. I occasionally edit the Facebook page for my dad’s cemetery business, which we run together. Sometimes I am specifically required.
I check a few TikToks, likely of the more original variety, often at least twenty of them. They are usually only a few seconds long.
Perhaps best of all, I chill with my girl. Having that bond is important, I think. Even if I devote a lot of time to technical pursuits, a human element can be supremely important.
I also deal with an array of difficult situations. This month I updated my Twitter bio to include the phrase, “Avid problem solver.” It is meant as a joke. It doesn’t really strike me that funny, but it says, I guess, that I don’t mind obstacles. What people might take it for, as in what it’s about, is that I am kind of a rearranger, you might say. I look at what we got, and I try to improve upon it.
The reason people might not see that in me is that I can be a little brooding over life situations that are difficult for me. I’d say that a lot of the time, I am a happy person, but when the walls start to close in, I sometimes feel my best recourse is to get outside this place and to let a solution come to me. A hot shower is second to this.
I am a playful person, but I feel that I encounter irony frequently. The real-life sort of irony is kind of comical for me, and I don’t always have someone to share it with. Sometimes I am just admiring situations that are at hand in other people’s lives, and I feel better than it isn’t happening to me. But to even think about it, that’s the confusing part.
Many people, I suspect, desire mindfulness and self-awareness, compared to being in a state of confusion. I am not about getting confused, but confusion does occasionally happen. I am just trying to keep my mind on the job. I want to believe that I don’t appear to be confounded.
As Reader’s Digest has been known to recount, laughter can be the best medicine. Laughter is a ready stress-buster. In fact, without a few laughs, the atmosphere feels oppressive and distressing.
Melodrama. Ivan Reitman comedies. Trailer Park Boys. Inappropriately inane emotional notes. Noisy songs that ignore rules of composition. Underwhelmed artists. Films with blissful dialogue.
Ridiculous Internet trends (the hive mind). Obscure Twitter highlights. The excesses of the most fortunate, who have strayed into bad taste. Beautiful, happy cats.
Stephen Malkmus. The Netflix original Flaked.
YouTube humour. The notes of sarcasm that Mutahar of someordinarygamers hits. Riverdale plot threads. Alex Meyers’ critiques of Riverdale. (Almost anything for young adults Alex Meyers likes to despise).
Unnecessary reboots. Well-highlighted irony in cinema. My best friend’s best moments. Being confronted by my own origins. “Postmodernist” or “meta” formula-breaking.
Jerry Seinfeld. Charlie Sheen. My brother sometimes gives me a laugh. His children have been known to give me a chuckle. My sister’s toddler is dear.
Bending reality to the will of the masses. TikTok comedians. What mainstream news opts to single out when the subject matter isn’t too grim nor necessary to be reported. Certain books on the market, whether inordinately silly accounts of common obstacles or cheerfully oblivious celebrity opuses. Faking spectacle to hold on to celebrity status.
Social turbulence. Sometimes optimism in the face of distressing evidence requires a sense of humour in the wake of steep inclines. The last laugh.
Steadfast resolve to succeed. Motivation messages for Generation Z champs. Productivity cult nonsense. Promises of the four-day workweek.
Tim Ferriss. Mark Manson. Bad decisions by Mark Zuckerberg. Really cool, grim scenarios. Characterizations in videogame cut scenes.
Hayden Christensen’s shift to the Dark Side of the Force. Lucasfilm decision-making. The decision to make superhero films unnecessarily dark. What passes for fantasy in the realm of three-act cinema.
If the subject of Facebook enters the conversation, my mom likes to say she isn’t on it.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a Facebook account in my dad’s name, and I think my mother also thinks that the two of them, my mom and my dad, have the same outlook, and disposition. By that logic, I take it that an account apiece isn’t necessary for them. Comments they leave are usually attributed to one or the other.
I have a small Facebook account. But despite having a humble reverence for the David Fincher-directed 2010 film The Social Network, my pleasure in being on Facebook is helping to run a not-for-profit business. For example, this very morning, a woman let me know, with an email to the Facebook page for the business, that she finds the business very beautiful, and you’ll understand why in a moment.
In 2007, at the sales company where I worked, Facebook on the desktop computers was blocked, so that entrance-level employee couldn’t enjoy it. At that time, even for a young man like me, Facebook was a lifeline. In 2012, Facebook App Center, an internet-based portable store, was carried out onto the market.
The store at first had 500 Facebook applications. which were. for the most part, games. I remember wondering why was this happening. Why were so many users playing games?
Around this time, my dad did kind of a noble thing, when, after years of helping manage the municipal cemetery for his job, he came across a little cemetery on the other side of town. Their trustees were hoping to share the burial ground with the district he had worked for.
My father acquired the cemetery and welcomed me on as a partner in 2012. For a nonprofit, as a retiree might characteristically enjoy working at, presently we require one day a week, ordinarily.
Louth United Church
I am not sure I suggested it myself, but it was probably me who did–making a business page on Facebook for the cemetery, so interested people could easily get ahold of us, like the woman did this morning. My dad had wanted a website for the cemetery, and this extra measure was one more step, a Facebook page
I compose posts that flow data about characteristic concerns we have. You see, I research and blog. I am an amateur writer.
I’ve composed a few brief tales, however, I don’t have the standard novel or screenplay that an essayist frequently has. I’m really an amateur blogger with family business ties. The business page on Facebook has nearly a hundred accounts of people who “like” it, and most of the control of the page falls to me.
One friend of the business, an elderly lady, I got to know a little during her brief visits to the cemetery, and also when the two of us interacted together on Facebook, had advice for me that I continue to apply on the Facebook business page.
My mother may never have signed up for Facebook, but I think she is pleased to think I show the initiative to manage the page. My mom worked for a small business for many years, as a clerk. We actually argue about many matters, but as long as I show a commitment to my dad’s retirement business, I continue to hold some cards in the game, between the three of us.
Nowadays Facebook has a significant draw, yet what we would never have expected are the losses Facebook has had to confront. Remember the lead-up to the appointment of 2016, when it was discovered that Facebook was utilizing Cambridge Analytica? That information firm gave Hillary Clinton a benefit, as her position was greater for Facebook than Donald Trump’s pass into the White House would have been.
It was trouble. Trump’s since been banned from Facebook, as well as from other social media. Granted, Maple Lawn Cemetery’s a small page, and we don’t handle cash transactions there, so the Cambridge Analytica scandal didn’t impact us much, although the distrust in the air that grew for Zuckerberg did have a toxic impact on how people used Facebook, compared to how they used it before the 2016 scandal.
Two days ago, in the early hours, CNET Tech, when reporting on Facebook going against the British Parliament, discussed online one Damian Collins, a member of parliament. Even now, Frances Haugen, CNET reports, is preparing to speak to British Parliament. It was Collins who took Cambridge Analytica to task in 2016, across the pond, and he is quoted as saying, “There needs to be greater transparency on the decisions companies like Facebook take when they trade off user safety for user engagement.”
The issue is that Facebook utilizes information about its customers to maneuver them to invest more energy, again became a national topic Sunday when Frances Haugen, a former Facebook worker, showed up on TV to clarify that Facebook is investigating strategies for better compelling and ultimately how to benefit from kids helpless against Facebook fixation.
Facebook has been successful this week demonstrating to the European Union that Facebook has adequate privacy protections in place, but they remain dodgy. Frances Haugen did them no favours, however.
You know, I don’t think my mother thinks about those kinds of things.
My mom has the perception that people are talking to each other when they are posting on Facebook. You can say that’s true, however, I think she sees those individuals “talking” rather than the more accurate description that anyone, when Facebook posts are public, can cooperate with those posts. The explanation for this is those messages from Facebook, about those individuals that you have been cooperating with, is not that those individuals posting have chosen companions to send messages to (ie my mom, I suppose).
What I mean is that when my mother is happy to leave a comment on a post, say, composed by a cousin of hers or by an aunt, with my dad’s account, the reason emails from Facebook come back to him with reminders is that my mother has initiated contact, with his account, with those family members, it is not because those family members want emails sent to him and to her (my mom and dad).
The drawback I personally have run into on Facebook is that I have that one friend who reacts to lots of the posts I do put up. He’s bizarre. I know there’s a cliched perception that if your mother is reading what you are posting on Facebook, you are dealing with trouble, but to that end I don’t remember too many times that the account that my mom and dad use came back with reactions to my posts.
My mom is good that way. Lots of times, I am dropping posts with little to no engagement, although I have an idea what works to at least merit a little bit of a reaction.
Many people prescribing what’s called a dopamine detox suggest staying off social media. Sometimes they say they never felt better after getting away from Facebook for a while (better, or clearer-headed).
I don’t think my mom ever felt Facebook was a problem among me and my brother and my sister. We aren’t children.
My mom doesn’t like me eating too much junk food, but she doesn’t raise objections to too much Facebook use. It just isn’t that Facebook is the problem its detractors say it is.
I doubt that Zuckerberg is the disrupter that Jesse Eisenberg plays him as in the David Fincher film. That really is great cinema. The brilliance of the ambiguity of the conclusion of the film leaves you with the knowledge of how the film’s events next played out in the real world and leaves the audience to ask an existential question, about the value of what Zuckerberg has done.
Jessie Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg is the Nietzschean overman who makes a brave journey, a very satisfying ideology. I find Facebook pleasant and harmless. Occasionally if I come on too strong, for a stranger’s liking, I get rebuked, but usually, I pick safe moves that don’t rock the boat too much.
The Social Network
Compared to both Facebook and Instagram, where the drawbacks are becoming ugly to discuss, I retain an optimistic view of Twitter, and I respect the measures Jack Dorsey has implemented to deal with hate speech, which while known to be a problem on Twitter, doesn’t engender the same conversation that I know of that it does about Facebook. Twitter is actually getting so it can conceivably warn you if you are writing an incendiary tweet. It is a changing attitude for the service, for sure.
About Facebook, people say things like hate content will earn more views and that is probably true, although I don’t know why. Facebook is being blamed for allowing this. I think that a person can be more attractive if they aren’t focused on material that is hateful.
A spiritual outlook is better, I think, say, like to believe that there is good in everyone, if it is only nurtured. Hate is a terrible quality to define a person by. There is vast beauty in the world, and to spend your time on Earth consumed by hatred is not a fine way to live life.
When I was a little kid, my mother would say the cliché, “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do the same?” It’s not quite the same thing, as my mom doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with Facebook. I don’t, really, either, despite the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016, and now the Frances Haugen 60 Minutes debacle.
Perhaps those people with whom my mom chats on Facebook, though they may understand Facebook better than my mother does, do like having comments from her, and like having their posts viewed. That my mother can mentally translate Facebook use into a “chat” that is organic in the sense that people are having a catch-up lets me know that there are probably many people who view Facebook, and Facebook Messenger, the same as that.
The mental concept of Facebook automatically translates into a natural style of conversation instead of being too robotic, which is old hat for anybody who can remember the days that Internet chat was a chief part of the Internet’s function, whether that was AOL or MSN Messenger, or, these days, Facebook Messenger.
Perhaps my participation in services like MSN Messenger back in the day helped elucidate for my mother how it is that Internet chat goes, but it is more likely that talk with my sister Kaite is what educated my mother into an understanding of Internet chat, as Kaite thinks of herself as an early adopter of Facebook.
Like a feedback loop, my sister’s instruction to my mother brought round for me insight into how people view Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Other people must have similar reactions when they are becoming familiar with it. While I would have understood it regularly given my experience on MSN Messenger as everybody had in the 2000s, I too feel that I am right as rain about how it is to be on Facebook, but not at the expense of how I feel it is to be part of a community inside Facebook.
The problem is the question of whether Facebook will keep a good enough reputation for itself among most Internet users around the world. Though my mom’s understanding of Facebook is probably largely due to my sister’s help, I think my mom is right that she sees the use of Facebook in a simple but useful light. None of that would be going on without my sister’s words of explanation for my mother and father.
I should remember that when I am writing emails to Kaite. Respect due, Kaite is married and has a little one at home, and has been working in the city of London, England, where their family resides.
My mom may discourage junk food, but Facebook is right by her. I remember my high school librarian who referred to many works of fiction as being “ice cream reading,” meaning they weren’t high-value books. Funny how that is.
You’re welcome to like this post, follow my blog, and leave comments. All the best, especially if you are on Facebook. If you want to contact me by email, you can, at the personal email patrickcoholan@hotmail.com
My personal Facebook account is https://www.facebook.com/findingenvirons Don’t think you can be affected? Give it a go. I hope you have a great Halloween this season.
One evening, the other day, I’d got to feeling, oddly, like how I did when I was an unfulfilled young person, feeling regret at letting time go, without, you could say, stopping to smell the roses.
Two weeks ago, the YouTube channel for IGN posted the Indiana Jones trailer commemorating forty years since Raiders of the Lost Ark made its premiere in 1981.
It was kind of weird to think about a related film, The Rise of Skywalker, being in theatres an entire year in the past. Things have certainly changed.
Song Lyric Sunday is is a blog hop organized by Jim Adams. For Sunday, December 20, Jim’s prompts include: “circle.”
A blog hop is a social experience, a little fun if you blog.
About music, to be a famous musician is a powerful fantasy. I regard exciting music or any sort of expert musicianship.
The prompt circle reminded me of the late, great Lou Reed’s song Vicious Circle, on the album Rock and Roll Heart. In 1976, Reed’s first album with Arista Records followed the records he did for RCA after The Velvet Underground ended, and was kind of immediately enjoyable for a casual listener, though Reed seems to flirt again on Rock and Roll Heart with self-destruction, not unlike what a depressed but notable musician can be like. Rock and Roll Heart is the seventh solo studio album by Lou Reed, released in 1976. Heart is the seventh collection by Lou Reed. It was his first for Arista Records after record magnate Clive Davis safeguarded him. There’s a TV interview with Reed in Australia recorded around 1975, just before he made Rock and Roll Heart, where Reed seems unhappy.
Reed tries a joke about the tyrant Adolf Hitler, calling him a great organizer. The interviewer admonishes him. I think Reed was obliquely referring to Andy Warhol, who once managed him as a musician.
Reed is a championed rock guitarist and singer who is seldom rivalled, given the influence of his personality. He is gone, but when I was in college, one long-haired, heavyset history teacher taught us a little about him, calling Reed “the godfather of punk.” In the library, I found a little book about subculture, music subculture in the nineteen seventies, and I put energy into understanding it.
Lou Reed’s New York
Because of the acclaim of The Velvet Underground, that was after they ceased making music together, as a group, songs of theirs began to be popular.
When in the year 1999 I went into the HMV store in New York City, the international chain of CD shops where you went if you wanted music, in the days when you bought music on physical media, the Velvets were well-advertised, as in giant letters in the store announcing, “The Velvet Underground.” You knew it was their town.
Years before I was born, Lou Reed had a Top 20 hit, contributing to the new popularity of both Reed, and, consequently, the Velvets. The most popular song by Reed is a song I first heard on FM radio, cruising the streets of my town, probably for no particular reason, or for no good reason.
Lou Reed a Life by Anthony DeCurtis
I didn’t know who that singer was, on the radio, until I heard the song again, as though it were still 1972, in some kind of Doctor Who-type parallel universe. I still didn’t know whom it was singing like that, but eventually, a friend of a friend listened to me describe the song, and he knew who it was, given a moment (between thought and reflection).
I was in a circle, then, being a kid in high school, dealing with pressures that are specific to what I think is most kids’ experience. It wasn’t vicious, by the way, just sayin’.
The song Vicious Circle could be about having social pressures, like specific patterns ingrained in you to run up against a wall. The song is less up-tempo than most of the songs on Rock and Roll Heart. I am not sure the better part of Reed’s listeners would embrace music like his, if they didn’t feel, at least from time to time, that the intrigue about the music was coming from a place touched by despair.
There are stories about Lou Reed, when he was the frontman of the Velvets, like that he played Woodstock in ’69, but nobody could hear the sound. I don’t think the Velvets did play Woodstock. They broke up amid tension.
The third and fourth of the Velvets’ records were more straightforward as rock albums than the first and second albums. I believe in 1968 they performed in Hamilton, Ontario, but if so, that was likely the Velvet Underground’s only show in Canada.
Lou Reed’s hit in 1972 includes the B-side Vicious (not Vicious Circle). Four years after that, after Reed was back to being a struggling songwriter, Reed with Vicious Circle was possibly pointing to his choice of making a livelihood as a rock singer, because Vicious Circle points to the song Vicious, and the 45 format itself is circular in shape, music being on vinyl discs, records. There is a hint of weariness in Vicious Circle.
There is a Bowie song, too, with the word circle in its title, and I know there’s a reference to him in the title of Vicious Circle in all likelihood.
Reed had a great sense of humour, I read in college, the Velvets’ drummer Moe Tucker remarking on that about Lou Reed.
Reed expounded on experience in his music, including thoughts about sex and culture. Reed did much of his very best music with the Velvets, who were John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker, and Doug Yule.
Everything Lou Reed did music-wise is very acceptable, I think. The Velvet Underground is a legendary band. Many an amateur rocker knows whom the Velvet Underground are, and get songs like What Goes On, and Sweet Jane, west coast surf type stuff.
I used to wonder what Reed intended for the fate of his music.
I think with Rock and Roll Heart Reed was trying his hand at again being a straightforward rock musician. I would venture to guess that he was a pretty hot musician, trying to move into AM Radio with the record Coney Island Baby, but had simultaneously conveyed the ability to fail with his 1975 noise opus Metal Machine Music.
Metal Machine Music sort of seems easier to take as an experimental ambient noise album, but I take it fans of the artist would have wanted more rock songs, not something altogether weird like Metal Machine Music. Wikipedia says, “In 1979 Reed said ‘Saying ‘I’m a Coney Island baby’ at the end of that song is like saying I haven’t backed off an inch. And don’t you forget it.'”
Reed lived a long life, until October 27, 2013, passing away at the age of 71. When I was In college, I didn’t believe Reed’s image as a street-weary rock musician, compared to who he was. I don’t have any acquaintance with it all, however.
Thanks to Jim Adams for the December 20 word prompt circle.
You’re caught in a vicious circle Surrounded by your so called friends You’re caught in a vicious circle And it looks like it will never end ‘Cause some people think that they like problems And some people think that they don’t And for everybody who says yes There’s somebody who’s staring, saying don’t
You’re caught in a vicious circle Surrounded by your so called friends You’re caught in a vicious circle And it looks like it will never end ‘Cause some people think that it’s nerves And some people think that it’s not And some people think that it’s things that you do And others think that you were cold, when you were hot They think that that is what it was about
Ontario is on target to meet its objective of getting 65 percent of grown-ups before the month’s over, and there is good faith it very well outperform.
They expect that May 24, around 2,490 drug stores provincewide will offer Pfizer and Moderna. There ought to in the long run be around 280,000 traveling through the network every week, authorities said.
Here on WordPress, occasionally I find specific bloggers to be interesting for me. One guy like that is Jim Adams, who has a blog and who has planned blog prompts.
Jim has an interest in music and knowledge to share.
I recall the previous winter when my father brought up to me that the sharing I was doing online didn’t appear to be excessively important, as should have been obvious. I help out my father with his business.
While I enjoy Facebook and Twitter, the day he offered that criticism about my content, I was a little miffed. I know that my dad clowns, but I tried to look past that, to see if I could think of a better approach. I tried chancing to utilize the focus right now that Jim has been providing.
I’ve been blogging since MySpace, kind of a wow. On WordPress, I have done some posting with a bit of humour to it, and in the months since my dad said that to me about how I seem on social, I eventually decided I still wasn’t too far off the mark.
There aren’t too many “rules” for running a social presence.
For November 29, 2020, Jim’s prompts include: “bird.” The late Leonard Cohen made the song Bird on the Wire.
By the mid-1960s, Cohen started to form rock and pop melodies. He had already written an expansive amount of writing, both poetry, and novels.
He studied at McGill in Montreal and made a name for himself through the sixties. Cohen kind of burned out about that stuff in the early nineteen seventies, but music came to him his whole career. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame enlisted Cohen in 2008, and Leonard Cohen got a Grammy Award in 2010.
Bird on the Wire is on the record Songs from a Room, released April 1969, and is like a poem set to the sound of Cohen’s guitar. The title Songs from a Room is very simple, understating the mastery of the music.
Songs from a Room LP
Being able to enjoy something from the years before I was born is lucky, as hearing Bird on the Wire is an experience that has power to it, sentimental. Strange song title, eh? A listener feels like the hardships of life have been met by others just the same, whether more talented, or more fortunate.
Not to sound presumptuous, but Bird on the Wire is great that way. Leonard Cohen got into music as a popular singer when he was losing interest in writing. Wikipedia says that Bird on the Wire is a country song, a detail which surprises me, and reading that, I thought additionally that the song just has a simplicity that sets it apart from other country songs.
The country genre of music isn’t something I understand, and maybe neither is the language of love, but when I was in college, I got to study, one semester, Canadian music. Country music in the Canadian Prairies is a favourite choice of many resident Canadians.
I can infer that Bird on the Wire could be a favourite of many who can remember 1969. It was years before I was born.
There is something about cowboy music, that we’ve adopted in Canada, that reflects how life in the Prairies shaped up. The first herders calling themselves “cowboys” got to the Canadian prairies in the 1870s, riding up from the US territories of Idaho and Montana.
The romantic image of the cowboy emerged around this American subculture. British Columbia “buckaroos” likewise sooner or later adopted the cowboy appearance.
I doubt that Cohen identified with being a cowboy; he was a novelist, poet and musician. He identifies, I think, with the archetype of a cowboy’s passion. I think of the scene in the Hollywood movie City Slickers, where Billy Crystal’s Mitch Robbins character plays the harmonica at the campfire.
Curly, Jack Palance’s character, interrupts the music.
Mitch Robbins: [Playing harmonica]
Curly: Put that away.
Mitch Robbins: [Stops, then resumes playing harmonica]
Curly: I said, put that away!
Mitch Robbins: Hey you know, the first time I tried to talk to you, you embarrassed me. So I teased you a little bit which maybe I shouldn’t have done, so I’m sorry.
And now you’re sitting over there playing with your knife, trying to frighten me – which you’re doing a good job. But if you’re gonna kill me, get on with it; if not, shut the hell up – I’m on vacation.
City Slickers
Wikipedia explains that before writing Bird on the Wire, Cohen carefully structured the song, before committing it to tape. To tell the truth, before I read Wikipedia’s description, I hadn’t thought that the song would be identified as a country song.
Cohen’s music is usually in the genres of folk, and soft rock. Romantic country music doesn’t meld with the other interests in music I have thought of. If Bird on the Wire is a country song, it breaks, I think, with the tradition of country music that country music fans enjoy.
It’s unique that way. I wonder if a country song should be simple, but distinctive. The answer isn’t straightforward.
Sometimes answers to questions like that turn up unexpectedly, even if it isn’t initially clear where to begin, to get an answer to the question. A post like this one, doing the research and writing the content, helps me understand better something that already interests me, the music. Also, maybe somebody else interested in this blog challenge thought to say something about this specific song.
I first heard Bird on the Wire when I was in high school, the twelfth grade or so, on a simply dubbed audio cassette.
Leonard Cohen passed on November 7, 2016 (aged 82).
I saw him once in concert. It was terrific.
Here are the lyrics to the song, followed by the song itself, in a video.
No. As the Pyramids are understood by many, trembling and fearful ranks of Egyptian slave men pushed and hauled giant blocks to mark tremendous points of energy on Earth, triangle-shaped tombs for departed leaders. We can imagine slave girls in leather brassieres and skirts of bird-feather and twine, Egyptian beauties shimmering with flesh soaked by the never-shrinking sun, drunk on wine, a vision of an apparatus with no more technology than what could float a raft in the river or raise a shelter in the vast desert.
All false, and hung on a myth that keeps humans organizing themselves like a slave assembly, where all power and competence are enacted as though by the living hand of God–it is a design conceived with the Pharaohs’ tombs in the mind’s eye.
Photographer: The Lazy Artist Gallery
As Ancient Egypt exerted its dominance, so too did reigning attitudes about a solidarity of people which became absolutely entrenched by the Pyramid’s sway, infiltrating the essence of the civilized world, as many understand it, an effort of many slaves.
The most earnest high school history teacher, the librarian who holds a catalog of records in disruptively accurate bookshelves, the Egyptian fantasist with his movie monster posters; all three present the mythology that the Pyramids were built with an outpouring of sweat and single-mindedness, the impossible, expansive tombs built from heavy rocks in cubes, hoisted by rope and ancient pulleys. Into the shape of three-dimensional Pyramids were constructed elaborate tombs, laid for departed Pharaohs of renown. Gizeh is the best-known.
It is the same will to organization and legacy throughout the Western world in the twenty-first century, where gentlemen in running shoes or luxury cars or perhaps dining in a capacity to manage what others might characterize as savage, to have plates and pints brought round by pleasant servers, the bosom and the heart. Gizeh’s tomb marked the first wine-and-dine.
Where will it end? As long as there are workers who are unsung, the dominion of the ancient Pharaohs will maintain its control. Update your browser.
The above is intended as an aside only. The International Day of Charity is observed annually on 5 September.
The very courteous Little Mermaid returns, for another tea party. Her theme, this month, is making confessions. The tell I want to bring, to the party, is how roadblocked, I’ve been, by Zork.
I know I am in a sense very old. Have you played Zork? It’s a game where you explore a dungeon and combat monsters.
Your commands for playing Zork typically consist of two words apiece, often a verb and a noun, short and sweet. It commands hours of your time if you are among the dedicated.
Did you run Java? It once boasted a solid three billion devices did. I’d sit, sometimes, on the main page of a Java site, to read chat remarks.
In college, a savvy young woman from Scarborough got to know me a little. Her name was Julie, and she was a singer. I’m sure she knew nothing about Zork.
All the same, Julie was outright a rock star on Livejournal. Her email was routed by beer.com, appropriately fashionable for that subculture.
When she wrote, ”it’s called myspace, and there are millions of brilliant people,” I was taken aback. I’d played Zork, in a retro edition. Facing the myspace site, I had a silent question.
“How do I move to the next room?” It was weird. Years later, Christmas, 2016, my very smart nephew referred to that, nonsense in the distant past.
I remember, because of Rogue One, a Star Wars Story. About IRC, “Justacrap,” my brother’s boy pronounced with scorn. Discounting me?
For wasting time with websites? Can you believe that? Sure, I made friends one way or another, but those people are now gone.
It wasn’t the sum of my activities, I guess. Truth be told, I was rotten at Zork, too.
I struggled to find satisfaction in a post I wrote June 15, 2017, although by now I’m better at the task, I feel.
The WordPress Daily Prompt for that day was the word “Total,” and what for me was the “total” mind-blowing news was that Twitter was undertaking a major step on route to what a lot of Twitter users hoped would mean success for the social media platform. That sounds dramatic, but Twitter did become visibly different. As German social media and blogging expert Susanna Gebauer reported again, on February 28, 2018, it could have meant the end of Twitter, or instead improved chances of success as a social media platform. (Last updated: 2019/11/26) In short, I wonder will it turn out like Myspace, or Yahoo!, or will it keep its status as an enjoyable user service.
I am obviously on Twitter and I enjoy it. Look here:
What’s more, I am sharing links both to an article which explains the change which happened, and also to Susanna’s post which explains where Twitter was coming from with the change, on the twenty-third of March, to restrict Twitter users with several accounts from automating the same tweet more than once.
I myself slowed down on how I was tweeting by dramatically slowing down how often I would twee. It would be a gigantic bummer if Twitter failed, and I continue to hope Twitter stays alive and well.
If you’re not on Twitter, maybe you should consider joining. It can be a lot of fun. I am curating this post to improve its accuracy, to provide Susanna Gebauer’s February 28 blog post, and because if you do find this note relevant, you’re welcome to, “like,” “follow,” and/or “comment” this blog post.
Thank you for noticing, and all the best to you in your personal life, and in business.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 