Well, first things first: This past week, a few more folks signed on for this blog/blagh/blah blah blah. Another 5 or 6 more and we may qualify as A Movement. Thank you, one and all, not forgetting those who have been here from the beginning (which is the title of a nice song from Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Trilogy album).
Now, it’s nothing personal, but:
Jeff Bezos’ yacht, last seen conducting sea trials in The North Sea, remains shrouded in mystery. It does have a helicopter and helipad and a second, smaller craft, presumably for accessing ports o’ call unable to accommodate a ship roughly the size of a World War II escort aircraft carrier. It’s also been reported that The Jeffster has purchased property in Hawaii that includes – and how this is possible I do not know – a portion of the Pacific Ocean. Cost a cool $78 million. Sounds like a whole lotta isolationist stuff to this observer. After all, what’s a man who’s been denied the chance of living outside the Earth’s atmosphere – free from pollution, conspiracy theorists, crypto-currencies, groundlings, poor folk in general and rising gasoline prices - to do? Hmm. A pause while I check something on Amazon … okay. For $6.00, ol’ Jeff can buy a copy of The Masque of the Red Death. 8 to 5 and half your money back says Jeff has not read the story or, if he has, he completely missed the point.
Well, he didn’t consult me before doing any of the above (we aren’t as close as we used to be). And if I considered $78 mil walkin’ around money, I might have done the same, my carbon footprint be damned. But do I even have a carbon footprint? And what does that mean? I don’t own a car and ride my bicycle whenever I need to be mobile. Now, I do eat food that’s thoroughly cooked (except for certain vegetables). Does that count against me? Who should I call? WWGD (What Would Greta Do)?
The most common example given of Life Imitating Art is George Orwell’s 1984. Fair enough. But there’s a new contender for this year, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, in which books are banned and consigned to flaming pyres. Yes, that sort of thing has been going on for decades (the banning more than the burning), but until this year, it had never been official government policy. Thank you, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the chuckleheads who draw their paychecks from Sovereign State of Florida. Once known for orange juice, famous homophobe Anita Bryant, and Spring Training baseball, it was often referred to as “God’s Waiting Room.” On Saturday evenings, Jackie Gleason assured us Miami Beach was “The Sun and Fun Capitol of the World.” And with the June Taylor Dancers, Sammy Spear conducting the orchestra, and Frank Fontaine as the lovable mush-mouthed drunk Crazy Guggenheim, he had a strong case. But that was then and this is now, and Florida is now where books go to die.
Ray Bradbury once said he wrote not to predict the future, but to prevent it. His books and short stories were filled with examples of what could come to pass if we weren’t careful and continued to ignore or disregard the warnings that were all around us. Fahrenheit 451 is perhaps the most notable example of his “preventative writing,” and apart from 1984 and It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, a more accurate portrayal of the pervading spirit of this less-than-enlightened Age you aren’t likely to find. But those are old books whose authors are long dead and gone. And as the stories are without giant robots, superheroes, or characters whose racial and gender identification issues outweigh anything else that could possibly go on in the world, there’s not likely to be a batch of Hollywood blockbusters or serializations on Netflix anytime soon, if ever.
And books are so inconvenient: they take time to read and require sustained concentration, and critical thinking skills to make sense of any ideas they may contain. And yes, it helps to have a sense of imagination because you never know where a book may take you.
Now, that doesn’t seem like a lot to me, but then I’m an old man. What else is there to do while I await the Angel of Death’s arrival, right? Next thing you know, I’ll be wanting an egg in my beer.
*** Please read Being An Introduction (Dec 12, 2022) before posting a comment. ***
Life Imitates Art ... again
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0058333/
And, thanks again, for inviting me to stroll Memory Lane.
I wasn't paying attention to the latest sea trials or real estate deals. Rather focused on low back pain of ambiguous origin.
Welcome, new readers.
Straight