Chronological Gradations

[mallorys_camera]

Exhibit #2,379 in my ongoing rant entitled Money Is a Consensual Delusion: Trump apparently just made $25 billion overnight on some crypto meme coin play.

That’s equivalent to the Remuneration earned from 359 lifetimes (assuming none of those earnings went to food, rent, cat supplies, etc, etc)

There is a karma to money I will never, ever understand.

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Meanwhile, many people I know are absolutely freaking out about Trump’s inauguration tomorrow: I don't see how anyone is going to get through this week without breaking every dish in the house or similar, or howling with anger, tears, or disbelief.

Why would I break every dish in the house?

I’d have to buy new dishes.

So long as the Trump grift doesn’t involve piping Zyklon B into any of the migrant detention centers, It Is What It Is.

I’m willing to participate in whatever Underground Railroad system emerges to pipe migrants into the restaurants & landscape architecture businesses that depend upon them, but fuck you, Tyson Chicken. The industry that will take the biggest hit there is actually construction; it will take 50 years without migrant labor to rebuild the parts of Los Angeles County destroyed in the current firestorms, but hey! Why rebuild? There will only be another firestorm five years from now. If not sooner.

I’ve finally come over to the other side, in other words: Yes, the apocalypse upon whose edge humans are presently teetering on is worse than anything humans have ever faced before.

So what?

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Meanwhile, instead of doing Useful Work, I spent yesterday staging a mini-film fest and playing with the kiskas.

I watched A Real Pain, a perfect little gem of a movie written & directed by the actor Jesse Eisenberg, about a heritage trip two cousins (Eisenberg & Kiernan Culkin) make to Poland to see what their grandmother went through during the Holocaust. Really good script. Not sentimental in the least but intensely moving. I liked it a lot.

I also rewatched (like for the 90th time) Sunset Boulevard, which, in my mind, is kind of a companion piece to Mulholland Drive.

Brilliant movie, of course, but the plot never made 100% sense to me, and on this rewatch, I finally figured out why: Bill Holden is supposed to be Gloria Swanson’s much younger gigolo, but I can’t really see much of an age difference when I look at Holden & Swanson. They both just look old.

I think this may be because when I first saw the film, I was 20 or so, and age was a monolith: Old people weren’t 35, 45, 60, or 80; they were just old, and I didn’t see any difference between them. And I've carried that initial perception through to all subsequent reviewings.

You only become sensitive to the nuances of aging (including the chronological gradations) when you age.

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The coming Snow Event is scheduled to start promptly at noon! So, I’m gonna go off to the gym before the world whites out.

Comments

[asakiyume]

Same-same with the underground railroad, but otherwise, same-same with the handwringing. A population that seems way less handwringy over all this is the actual undocumented population, who are very clear-eyed about what they're up against and just are determined to do what they need to do to survive and hopefully make a better life.

You were talking about resilience in a past entry (... which as of this writing I haven't commented on, but I nodded as I read it), and I think that's one of the most important, empowering things one person can do for another: tell them (remind them) that they are resilient, capable, and can and will deal with whatever comes. One thing I want to do is get some first-aid training. That, to me, is the sort of thing that's helpful in whatever bad scenario you want to imagine. And YOU are already well equipped for that. (*admires*)

[mallorys_camera]

First-aid is a really good skill to have.

And so is foraging for useful plants (which you are equipped for! 😀)

[asakiyume]

True! I know enough to know I'd starve if I had to rely on foraged food. But it helps; it does all help.