I have recently begun (because I am still a bit of a Luddite and chronically underfunded) the process of moving the vast crowd of films my wife and I own onto an external hard-drive thousands of times more capacious than the brain of Johnny Mnemonic, so that we may watch them on the big TV in the living room without having to walk to shelf to DVD player and back to chair like we’re cavemen. Oh, no, we’re joining the world of… the current decade, more or less, using the home computer to send files to a phone which then transmits them to a doodad plugged into our television. SIMPLE!
This pursuit has given a couple of subsidiary enjoyments. The most frequent is the feeling of virtuous rectitude each time I get to the message from my DVD-to-file software telling me I have to affirm that the file is only for non-commercial home use, because that’s exactly what I’m at.
The other is being reminded of the existence of some of the stuff in our collection. Some, like Fiend Without a Face, are extremely subjective sources of enjoyment. Others are generally held up as classics by people qualified to make that kind of pronouncement.
For example, one is always well repaid for a re-watching of Alien.
This week’s film is neither whimsical nor (specifically) educational. I was somewhat startled by it, given what I had seen from its creator in the past, and I honestly think that watching it improves the soul. Also, as one who occasionally stretches his attempts at craft into the realm of art, I think it’s important to recognize art when it happens.
I parenthesize about education above, because there are lessons to be taken here– something about hidden depths and hidden burdens, both of which we tend to forget exist in pretty much all other humans.
On a side-note: I showed this to my wife last night, and we realized that between the two of us we’re on the same prescriptions as this chap. I don’t think there’s any deep meaning to that…
Yeah… I kind of missed the film last week, didn’t I? A sign of how damn tired I am from The Regular Job’s demands, which over the past two weeks have been enhanced by a self-inflicted demand to make sure the people who are looking after my usual duties have an easy go of things.
I am, at least, taking a good long break– I don’t put rump to office chair again until 19 July. I also don’t have a lot of projects in mind for the vacation period other than writing and some personal pen-work, which is good, because that mass of killingly-hot air which has been afflicting the north-west coast of the continent will arrive here… sometime tomorrow.
Although it will have shed some heat along the way, for which I am extremely grateful.
Here’s two films because there wasn’t one last week: One jolly interesting and one quietly amusing.
I don’t expect to be making up any entertainment deficits when I return, because I know my limitations. See you in three weeks, everyone, unless I melt in the interim.
In addition to being four days from my second COVID vaccination, I am thirteen away from my annual summer vacation.
Which is why I’m feeling extremely depleted and non-clever. Here, have a video featuring someone talking about two pens which, despite brand and model, are not at all the same.
Her speculations about the feedback of the older one– any or even all of the above.
†My son is, given his first vaccination status, going back to school for the first time since May 2020. He’s grown a LOT in the intervening time, and he’s also filled up his sketchbook, because it likes making visual art.
††The Wing Sung 618 is being set aside for amendment– there’s an interruption in the ink channel of the feed that requires force-filling of the collector. Unsatisfactory, in an otherwise darned good pen.
The less-fun and not-usual thing I bring today is a useful link to what happens when someone who understands science gets fed to the back teeth with people saying dumb things about vaccines. If you know someone who is drifting away from sense and one of the actual benefits of modernity, try this small bit of text.
Now, to balance that out, here’s some delightful cartoon cats, one of whom is a terrifying psychopath. The other one wears a cap.
