How 2020 feels

Basically the only way I can engage with the horribleness of modernity, politics, society, economics, and human-built institutions which degrade everything about the human condition, is through other people's senses of humor.

For example, Tycho of Penny Arcade on the Google monopoly lawsuit:

There's a lot of odd dialogue that surrounds this stuff, like if you hate the naked exertion of monopoly power you're just hating the player or some shit. That you have a problem with people winning or something, issues with the concept of profit fundamentally. What an incredible rhetorical dodge! We're not talking about profit, and even if we were, it matters how the profit was generated. What we're talking about is a Draconic hoarding of wealth, collected in a vessel made from illegal mergers and filled by illegal acts.

... You can't really make the case to younger people that "capitalism," broadly writ, is gonna do shit for them. ... if money is allowed to pool like this, devils grow in it. If you don't fucking govern, if you don't moat these things in a circle of salt, they will invariably become something uncontainable - something too big to fail, part of the walls.  

Or Alice Fraser on reasons that the money-vampires who rule us hate the idea of minimum wage:

In the news today, debates about minimum wage rage on in America despite the entire economy collapsing in all directions. Because if you can't argue about how much money you shouldn't be paying the employees you're itching to replace with robots, how can you even call yourself a bloated blutocrat? 

Isn't it actually more insulting to pay someone a minimum wage that they can afford to feed their children with, than have them work for free while sucking at the milky teat of a rhetorical belief in forward momentum to a Trumpian future? Do you even want a job if you don't want to work for free? Have you ever thought that working for tips is just charity by c**ts who can refuse to give it to you if they don't like your smile, and let's be honest, you've got a shitty smile 'cause you can't afford teeth in your goddamn mess of a country. 

European countries have suggested that if you can't afford to pay your employees then you shouldn't have employees, if you can't run an economy on businesses that can afford to pay their employees, your economy is a lie, and if you're paying your employees in hopes for some sort of amorphous future advancement, you're not a business, you're a religion. (The Last Post 248: Arts in Crisis, 1m59s -- 2m51s, bleeping in original)

... or basically any episode of TRASHFUTURE, although I warn you that listening to educated people describe the state of the world has flung me into intense despair several times. (The hosts do lighten it with comedy but it's very much a sarcastic look at how horrible everything is.)

If you want something hopeful instead, I suggest following Cory Doctorow's excellent advocacy work, for example  the several articles, books, and links offered here.

This post's theme word is scamander (v. intr.), "to take a winding course." Most dystopias do not reasonably portray the slow scamander preface.

Le Tout Nouveau Testament

Le Tout Nouveau Testament (The Brand New Testament) is a film nicely established by its first line: "God is real, and he lives in Brussels." The premise is extended by the stipulation that God lives in a top-floor apartment, which he has never left since the beginning of time, with his wife and 10-year-old daughter (his son having snuck out in a well-documented episode and Gotten Into A Bit of Trouble With The Romans). He runs everything through an outdated computer in his bigger-on-the-inside home office. And "runs everything" really means everything: we see him devising weather disasters, the rule that "the other line always moves faster", and managing individuals' lives, all through this computer.

God is also kind of horrible, true to the Old Testament version of things. Corporal punishment, strict rules, no empathy with suffering. His daughter sneaks into his office, SMSes everyone on the planet with their exact date of death, changes the root password, and then escapes the apartment (Jesus told her that the washing machine has a secret tunnel down to the Earth!). When God (of course) follows her, to try to retrieve (1) his daughter, and (2) access to his omnipotent computer, he is confronted with the unpleasantnesses of the world that he devised. To great comedic effect. The directors, editors, and writers clearly want God to be an unsympathetic character, and they are successful. His sympathetic daughter, of course, seeks apostles while on Earth and has a scribe (homeless man) following her, writing a new testament. She does some miracles, just light ones --- doubling a sandwich, walking across a canal. Nothing showy, but played for laughs in contrast with God's clear lack of powers (he plunges into the canal, and is hungry, dirty, and eventually deported).

It was a neat movie, although it didn't contain as many laughs as I expected from the premise. Many of the apostles' stories (interwoven, of course, throughout the film) were lonely and bleak, and invited serious reflection in the audience. (The color palette, dominated by greys and rain, echoed this.) These were intercut with cute "news" segments showing ridiculous things, but the overall tone was more somber than expected. (I think I expected something more silly, like the tone of Amélie.)

I recommend.


This post's theme word is naches, "emotional gratification or pride, especially taken vicariously at the achievement of one's children." Not much naches is on display here.