dark matter indeed

{Warning: Spoilers ahead!}

I 'just' finished Dark Matter, Season 1 on Apple TV+* and I think it might be my strongest television recommendation possibly since Lost (!?).  I will say that this show is not for the faint of heart.  It's not scary, precisely, but the philosophical implications of this particular theory of multiverse are somewhat harrowing.  

The show (and evidently Blake Crouch's novel from which it was adapted) seems largely based upon^ my own personal theory of the multiverse, which was initially a bit surprising, but as the season progressed, made it comforting.  The wrinkle I hadn't anticipated (and what I found most disturbing about the show) was the extent to which navigation of the multiverse is dependent upon Mind.  

I'm not sure I find the science too compelling (a bit too human-centric {self-centric} for my taste), but for the sake of storytelling, the plot mechanic is inspired.  Jason Dessen (the protagonist, played by a very good Joel - Joel Edgerton) is a physicist in Chicago who has invented The Box, a giant version of a box several versions of him have invented that allows particles to exist in superposition (in this case existing within multiple iterations of the multiverse simultaneously).

The big Box allows not just a particle to exist in superposition but a whole thing - a person, say or even a couple of people - to enter the box and navigate through the multiverse.  The tricky bit is that the way that you determine which of the infinite realities you are going to emerge into when you once again open the box is based on your mind - not just your conscious thoughts, but your unconscious and subconscious state of mind when you open it (plus all of the same of those who you might be traveling with!).

Source: https://tinyurl.com/564drzcz

There's a bunch more plotty bits that happen that make for a really great season of television, but what struck me hardest was the moment when Jason emerges into a Chicago in a world that has been ravaged by plague.  He makes his way back to his house to find his wife, visibly ill, shocked to see him (because this world's him succumbed), and she is wrecked.  It's a very realistic glimpse into what a truly catastrophic outbreak might look like at the street level in America...

I'm most of the way through Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, a sweeping chronicle by Kyle Harper of how all of human history has been shaped by (or guided by) the micro-organisms that have made us sick.  Alternately it's a history of how human civilization has created and caused the uniquely massive variety of tiny little things designed to (and actively getting better at) kill us because we've gotten so good at existing... The book is really a constant questioning of which of those definitive interpretations is more true at any given time in human history, and emphasizes the degree to which our collective Thrownness operates not just on an individual level, but also at a biological level (and also at a cosmic level, naturally).

The version of you that you get to inhabit is inherently arbitrary, but certainly doesn't feel that way to us.  Choice - Action - Self... These are the things from which we build our narrative - our lives, right?  The idea that it is chance and circumstance where we find ourselves runs contrary to our modern American sensibility.  We work harder and harder to get further and further away from The Uncomfortable Truth** by filling our attention with screens and faiths and mantras, but the reason that the uncomfortable truth is truth... well, it's because it is, right?  

But I think it's easy to interpret The Uncomfortable Truth as something akin to Nietzschean nihilism, but the comfort (!!) of Humanism is its clear antidote.  We may not be much, us, here toiling away at living on this small out of the way planet - but our over-arching trend, tending toward progress for more of us - and constructing our grand Civilization, which endures and attempts and evolves - that is the thing that we're all here for.  What is a civilization but a narrative - a collection of all of the little narratives, most forgotten (heck, most of them were side quests to begin with!). 

So I suggest that you enjoy your story - if it's not exactly the version of it you were hoping for, rest easy in the knowledge that there very might well be another one where it's that, but you can soak up what you can here... maybe strive for a bit more of that other preferred one, but as Jason/Joel learns when he gets in the Box, you may like the look of another version, but you were made (or perhaps you made yourself) ready for this one right here, and no other.

Enjoy it (and by it, i also mean Dark Matter... it's really good).

 

* It seems to me that Apple TV+ produces nothing but bangers - like they just aren't interested in getting content out for the sake of content, but everything is really quality.  (That's not to say that I have seen all of it, nor that all if it is necessarily my thing, but I just went through a list of their productions, and everything on it that I've seen some or all of is really quite very good!).  In this era of lapsing quality in all things, that is really quite remarkable, but I'm going to put a pin in it for the moment, and move back to my starting point.

^ keen observers will note that Crouch's novel hails from 2016 whereas my own theory wasn't articulated fully on Roman Numeral J until early 2018.  

** I've been reading around a bit as well in the self-help and satirical self-help genres (it's often hard to tell those apart) in Mark Manson's Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope, and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and reading Lead it Like Lasso earlier this year as well as a bit of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits.  Generally these are not my types of books - but I've been on a bit of kick on the concept of "Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable" and working on a project, for now it's just a PowerPoint presentation, and I'm figuring out if it's enough to be even that, or maybe something more - a blog post, perchance a little book (!?)...

it's a ship, it's a star...

 I saw a stream of 6 to 8 pink / firework-looking comet tails streak across the night sky directly above my driveway, flying from West to East (that's the direction of my driveway... unless you're pulling in)

At first, I thought it was a large airplane, flying low above us (as if coming in for a landing), but the path was flying straight East - toward the lake rather than south toward the airport. Also, when I opened my car door and stepped out there was no sound at all coming from the phenomenon.

On further inspection, the lights were not coming from the ends of a vessel (tail and wing tips, etc.), but it was lines, in the shape of a long hull (thus thinking I saw something like a plane - a tube of some sort).  The brightest lights came from the center of the 'vessel', so I thought in the end maybe the shape was just made up of comet trails themselves.

I had stepped out to pull the Hyundai into the driveway (just over an hour ago), and happened to look up through the sunroof.  It appeared, and I tracked it, and stepped out of the car (remembered to put it back in Park!) to get a better look at it through the branches, and then between the treelines in the middle of the road.

*   *   *   *   *   

29 January 2025 - 10:24am

Ok, mystery solved - it was a falling satellite: Starlink-5693

Elon is hacking my night sky now...

a work in progress...

There was once a place on the erstwhile internet called "Seen Reading" (which seems now to have become a book, because, sure, I guess, let's print off the whole internet!).  The premise was a brief observation of a person, usually on public transit, who was reading a book, noticing what page they were on in that book, and then quoting on that page.

This premise of seeing where a person was - both in their reading journey of a particular book and in transit - I suppose it's a bit fanciful, but it feels like we might gain some insight (imperfect and incomplete to be sure into a person who we see where they are in their journey.

When Tim asked me (a bunch of us really) a month or so ago what we were currently reading, I answered him a list of 7 books - a sort of typical number that I'm usually in the middle of.  So I thought a current reckoning - not only of books, but of shows (and perhaps any movies too) that I'm in the midst of completing.

I've been on goodreads quite a bit more in 2025 than ever before, because I'm planning on writing a short review of each book I finish this year, not just cataloging them.  They have a feature of the "currently reading" list called 'tabled', so I'll go through my active reads and watches, and then see if I can complete a catalog of tabled texts as well:

Books 

[This feels like a fairly low number of active books for me, but in part, I don't have any of my typical encyclopedic works that I am working through, of which there is usually one or two]

1. Light in August, by William Faulkner
2. Frank Talk: The Inside Stories of Zappa's Other People, by Andrew Greenaway
3. I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger
4. The Hunting Party, by Lucy Foley
5. Plagues Upon the Earth: Diseases and the Course of Human History, by Kyle Harper

Shows 

[of course there are many shows that I am between seasons for - I've watched 3 seasons of Barry, but not the 4th again.  I watched The Bear, Season 1, but not the rest,,, yet]

1. Dune: Prophecy, Season 1
2. Laid, Season 1
3. Fast Friends, hosted by Whitney Cummings
4. Star Trek: Prodigy, Season 2
5. The Decameron, created by Kathleen Jordan
6. No Good Deed, starring Ray Romano & Lisa Kudrow
7. mr. & mrs. smith, Season 1
8. The New Yorker Presents, Season 1

Movies 

[I may actually adjust this list before I hit "Publish", as I'm working my way through one of them now]

1. The Raven, starring John Cusack
2. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, starring the BeeGees!

tabled 

[I'm not sure if I intend to finish some of these, or most of these or what, but l started them all with that in mind, I'm sure.]

Wallace & Gromit: Murder Most Fowl

Time Bandits

Franklin

What If, Season 3

Northern Exposure

Dark Matter

The Sticky

Castle Rock, Season 2

Pop Culture Jeopardy

The Magic Island, by William Seabrook

How I Met Your Mother

An Island Away, by Daniel Putkowski

The Journey of Natty Gann

Our Trip to New England!

 Directions: Begin by filling in the form on this page with one of each word for the type of word requested.  Then, enter the word into the paragraphs below according to the number requested.  Read the paragraph aloud and ENJOY!!!

1. [a first name] __________________________________________________
2. [proper noun] ________________________________________________
3. [city] ________________________________________________________
4. [person of significance] _______________________________________
5. [past participle] _____________________________________________
6. [body of water] ______________________________________________
7. [family surname] ____________________________________________
8. [U.S. State] _________________________________________________
9. [type of baked good] ___________________________________________
10. [geographic feature] ____________________________________________
11. [city feature] ___________________________________________________
12. [landmark] _____________________________________________________
13. [a number] ___________________________
14. [weather phenomenon] _________________________________________
15. [famous author] ________________________________________________
16. [noun] _________________________________________________________
17. [sinful substance] ______________________________________________
18. [Title of an Important Person] _____________________________________
19. [Home Ec Term] _________________________________________________
20. [adjective] _______________________________________________________
21. [type of water body] _______________________________________________
22. [verb] ____________________________________________________________
23. [popular acronym] _________________________________________________
24. [wet foodstuff] _____________________________________________________

Our Trip to New England!

 

Ah, I remember it like it was 23 or so years ago...  

We three (Mom, Papa, and (1)__________) headed off on (2)_______________ Airlines to fly from Chicago to (3)_________________.  (This would eventually become my first of four trips {so far!} through Boston's Logan Airport - once in 2013 for a Haitian Studies conference at Harvard and later in 2015 and 2019 on Peter Mahler's dime to meet with Carmella Kletijian and (4)______________________________).

We collected our rental car (possibly my first time ever driving a (5)_______________ car!), and were off to drive north up the coast of the (6)______________________.  Our first landmark was passing Kennebunkport, Mass. where the (7)______________________ Family famously had their summer compound.

Further up the coast we stopped in Portland, (8)___________________ and tried their world famous lobster (9)__________________s.  I don't remember quite where we stayed that first night, but I think we continued up and around the Atlantic (10)__________________________.

Our first full day (or one of the days, I don't really remember the timeline), we visited Acadia National Park in Bar (11)______________________, Maine.  Driving into the park (I think), Don & Hope, having recently reached retirement age, bought lifetime passes to any (12)_____________________________ in the entire country, which they have gone on to use (13) ____________ times since that trip in 2001.  

Before leaving Acadia, we saw the famous (14)________________ Hole, and stopped at Bar Harbor Brewing Company before heading north to Bangor, home of famous author. (15)__________________________________.  I recall we stopped at a (16)____________________ shop in Bangor, asking about the whereabouts of Mr. King, but it was before we all had the internet in our pocket, and the book store owner said he liked to be left alone, so I think that's about all we did in Bangor.

We drove west, through New Hampshire (where we learned that the only place you can buy (17)_____________________ in New Hampshire is at designated State (**17**)__________________ stores!  Arriving in Vermont, we stopped at one of (18)________________ Jim Jefford's campaign offices, who in 2001 was the only Independent Senator serving in the US Senate, after he had left the Republican Party earlier that spring!  (Jeffords retired in 2007, and was replaced by Bernie Sanders, who has continued serving as an Independent from Vermont).

One of our nights (or our one night?!?!) in Montpelier, Vermont, we had dinner at NECI, The New England (19)_______________ Institute, and had what has to have been the (20)______________meal I had ever had up to that point!  Fine dining / haute cuisine - what a meal!

We drove west from there to Burlington, on the shores of (21)________________ Champlain, which at the time was (22)_____________-ing to become an additional Great Lake, so that school kids across the country would have to remember C.H.O.M.E.S. as a mnemonic for the Great Lakes, instead of the much easier (23)_____________________. (I'm pretty sure there's VHS footage somewhere in the Seeger House of Joel throwing some serious shade at Lake Champlain, where he's shooting footage of a big puddle, and calling it Lake Champlain... classic!).

We also drove into Canada, and to Montreal (which was not so many kilometers farther), where we ate the great Canadian cuisine, Poutine (french fries with (24)__________________ on it), and Joel drove the wrong way down a one way street.  Whooopsy-Daisy!

Sorry, this is all I really remember about our trip all those years ago... Half of my life ago just now.  I do remember that it was a lot more fun than I was expecting - seeing all the things we saw, and being with you both right when you'd retired and had such freedom to travel and see all the things you hadn't gotten around to yet!

 

 

merry christmas 2000 in a mercury grand marquis 2004 (a review)

 merry christmas season y'all!

40 days and 40 nights ago (or so), we came into possession of a brand (new to us) 2004 Mercury Grand Marquis LS, all in tan.  At first, Brooke was mortified, but has now come to a place where she will just never be seen with it ever... ever.

How we landed on this particular car isn't terribly important, but knowing that it was Andy and me who did the choosing - and the fact that it was a vehicle that had both a CD player, and a tape deck - shit, we didn't even look under the hood (what would we have pretended to be looking at!?). [tbh I still have not looked under the hood]

We did, being good old fuckin' car buyers, bring a CD to test any potential CD players in old cars... We brought Blackhawk, by the band Blackhawk from my nearly original CD collection, and (sadly) the CD did not play [No Disc].  This was disappointing, but (we felt, brilliantly) a good negotiating point to bring down the price.  We had no tape, to similarly test that device, but when we got back to the "dealership" John brought out a second CD from their collection to verify the test.  It also failed.

We dickered down the price a bit, and brought it home (I'm thinking I'm going to call it the MERC, but am open to suggestions).  Andy and I immediately took it on an errand to Beloit, bringing 2 Christmas tapes of his, and (on a last minute hunch) a "burned" CD from the Clinton House collection.  (I vaguely remembered an era of CD players - both in cars and out - where it could stop playing CDs {or sometimes stop playing burned CDs} and you could "trick it" by playing a burned CD, and then try a pre-recorded one again and it would work {or all in vice versa}.

AND IT WORKED!!! - 

   Merry Christmas CD 2000 (and a happy new year, too)

1. Jamie - Weezer
2. Mrs. Potter's Lullaby - Counting Crows
3. Handle With Care - Traveling Wilburys
4. California - Mason Jennings
5. Baby One More Time - Travis
6. The Great Beyond - R.E.M.
7. Rowboat - Johnny Cash
8. The Thunder Rolls (Long Version) - Garth Brooks
9. Between the Bars - Elliot Smith
10. Blue Moon - Chris Isaak
11. The Ground Beneath Her Feet - U2
12. I'm Gonna Keep on Loving You - Lisa Loeb & Dweezil Zappa
13. Into The Sun - Sean Lennon
14. Shakespeare's Tragedy - Danny Wilde & The Rembrandts
15. If You Want To - Cat Stevens
16. Don't Let it Bring You Down - Annie Lennox
17. Thank You - Dido
18. Accidently Kelly Street - Frente!
19. Emaline - Ben Folds Five

Here is the review:

After 24 years, I feel like this mix still holds up pretty well!  Not every single track - I would have some notes, but it fairly rocks - starting off with "Jamie", which is my favorite song from the Blue album, which evidently isn't on the Blue album.  

"Mrs. Potter's Lullaby" remains probably my favorite Counting Crows song of all time (I remember when someone who was Omaha cool from that era told me that they loved that song except for the lyrics, but 'they weren't really lyrics' people, and I confirmed that it is a great song).

As a young person to Traveling Wilburys, I am delighted that I knew how cool they were even back when I was just graduating college.

While Mason Jennings feels increasingly 'of a time', I absolutely think "California" is one of his best ever songs - and it starts a darker turn for the mix, falling into a bit of the ever-present 'depressed bastard' portion of my mix CDs of the era.

Travis's cover of Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time" is indicative of this mix CDs placement in the height of the Napster era.  While this one is available now via a rarities collection, at the time it was quite the find.

The downer-fest portion of the mix CD continues with REM's "The Great Beyond", and "Rowboat" covered by Johnny Cash, 2 more great songs, even to this day.

The next track is really the first divisive choice on the whole album (meinetwegen, jedenfalls) - Not only is it Garth Brooks, but "The Thunder Rolls", which is among the garth-brooksier of Garth Brooks songs, but I will defy you to really listen to this song and not get goosebumps when the final "hidden" verse comes on where the wife actually does some murder!

Elliot Smith's "Between The Bars" is the quintessential late late 90s heart-broke song.  :(

The next song is where this mix gets a bit... much.  "Blue Moon" is a classic song with a nice long tradition... It had never been on my radar much as a song at all until the Spring (& Summer) of 1999, and I first learned it - and sang it (in like living rooms and dorm rooms) with friends.  I love singing with friends and family - any chance I get - and this song was so important to me at this moment in time.

So too, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" by U2, which was a real mood piece, and deep, because the lyrics are (purportedly) by Salman Rushdie, from a big fat doorstop of a book that I have not read.

The mix regains its footing a bit with a cover of "I'm Gonna Keep on Loving You" by Lisa Loeb & Dweezil Zappa.  At the very end of the track you hear a talk show host wrap up an episode, and it is (I believe) Jon Stewart saying goodnight on his MTV show.  Dweezil and Lisa (which I think was also a short-lived Food Network show!) was a celebrity power couple that I wanted for the world to last.  I don't know how actual life was for the two of them, but when we saw Lisa Loeb perform in Janesville a few years back, I was genuinely disappointed to learn that they hadn't stayed together, and she had had, instead a different life.  It's hard when people don't choose the people that we have chosen for them... sometimes.

Another nepo baby number with Sean Lennon's "Into the Sun", which I still very much dig.

The Rembrandts were just about my favorite band of the 90s, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a mix tape or mix CD by me that doesn't have one of there songs... almost never The One With The Famous Show Attached To It...

Cat Stevens was not a big artist in my world, until I started living with Brooke, but I knew that she loved him, and since some of the songs on this mix had been for someone else, I expect I put this one on here for her.

I apologize for the Annie Lenox and Dido portion of this disc... I don't know what I was doing here... at all.

But then Frente!  You're welcome!  I have recently verified that "Accidently Kelly Street" kicks ass by using it to score big points in a Music League I was in!

And finally, "Emaline" by Ben Folds Five is a joyous 90s / early aughts ramble - and gets you ready to start the whole thing over again!

Toys vs. Tools

We watched (and bought*) Twisters 'tonight' - and it was totally, absolutely pretty good.  For context, Twister was a movie that came about in the heart of my youth and is a movie that I truly love, unironically, and unapologetically.  It came out when I was 18 years old and weeks away from graduating high school, and it imprinted on me.  Twister is earnest, a little schlocky (in all the best ways), and a fairly fun ride (literally, too, as Brooke and I did the Twister ride at Universal Studios Florida, although not actually literally as the ride wasn't that great - I just remember standing in a room with a fence, and then it was kind of windy, but not at you, just near you...).

Anyway, the point is - Twister is a pretty okay movie that comes to some relevant (if somewhat cliched) conclusions - "Making something of yourself" and "Don't be a total sellout" and "Love love (or no divorce allowed or something...)".  The science bits / meteorology / plot stuff is all very good.  There's a science bucket full of science puffins, and if they get the bucket in front of the twister and all the puffins fly up into it, they get science to speak tornado!

Twisters on the other hand starts with some children hobbyists who have a geo-engineering science fair project that ends in tragedy.  The tragedy of standing in front of a tornado and being killed by it - shocker.

The first mistake was to make the movie as a completely standalone sequel - like, it didn't need to integrate big parts of the earlier cast, but some cameos and nods to the earlier work would have been nice.  And grounding it in the 'science' of the earlier - a bit of "standing on the shoulders of giants" - I think might have grounded the plot in some semblance of the realistic, but of course those are not themes that we like in our current era, whether fictional or non-fictional.

The young will save us, and a profound disinterest in the ideas that came before... (generally before 2015 or so if you investigate the thinking very deeply).  The absolute importance of being liked - and if you aren't liked publicly (praised visibly), then you may as well not bother.

The central message of this far inferior sequel seems to be about "Ways to 'keep' getting ahead".  The happy ending isn't anything about doing good science for the world, or even like getting married or being happy or anything but frakking starting a company!

Congratulations!, You made it, please begin exploiting... 

{sigh}

* renting on Amazon Prime is a total scam - the cost of buying is generally just under double the cost of renting, and I feel like most movies - you will find another time in life when you are going to watch it or show it or reference it, so just own it forever (until Amazon collapses, which at this rate will likely be after the US government collapses!).

The Lingering: Skulldiggery Book 3, by DM Gritzmacher (book review)

Probably your favorite bartender / real estate magnate returns (The Quarry, 2023) in an interweaving blend of eras and narratives.

Almost 44 years ago, Russell Stander found something.  Spending summers of his adolescence away from home and friends in Michigan, and instead a season-long visit to his idiosyncratic, elderly aunt in Western Illinois, Rusty is understandably in search of adventure.  As it turns out, he and his cadre of summer friends find more than they bargain for, discovering a mysterious, abandoned graveyard full of dark secrets. 

Stephen King and Peter Straub described the “dreamlike and slightly unnatural… characteristic of borderlands” in their novel Black House, and DM Gritzmacher’s third installment of the Skulldiggery series takes place just a short way down that most awesome (and awful!) of all American borders – The Mississippi River.  The story hops between the present day, the early 1980s, and the turn of the 19^th into the early 20^th Century, with each of the three eras meandering toward each other as the narrative unfolds.  In our modern moment, we find middle-aged bar owner Rusty returning to the small community of Almore, Illinois with his friend and employee, Tom Secrist, a retired police officer.  In the early 80s, we find the same Rusty, 10 years old (give or take), and a group of four friends wandering through the countryside in search of some fun and some adventure.  And eighty years prior to that, a mysterious figure on either side of the border that is The Mississippi (and the turn of that century on either side of 1900) also wandering that same countryside where the boys find themselves we are witness to a sequence of grisly murders told from the perspective of the perpetrator.

It's part Stand By Me and part In Cold Blood, with a dash of co
smic horror, and a world of related stories swirling all around the edges.

Engaging, leaving you hungry for more.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023

ISBN: 9798986638751

Page Count: 259

Publisher: Piqued