old man goes on vacation…

Walnut, IA Cenex: $46.34 (16.095 G)

Topeka, KS Murphy Express $34.53 (12.605 G)

Pauls Valley, OK Leonard’s Super Stop $43.00 (14.339 G)

Hillsboro, TX Shell: $40.34 (13.914 G)

Austin, TX Woody’s: $43.52 (15.011 G)

Royce City, TX Buc-EE’s: $36.25 (13.333 G)

Ward, AR Big Red Valero: $35.47 (12.762 G)

Litchfield, IL Mr. Fuel: $45.48 (14.396 G)

In support of The Random

In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, I had an idea for a TV show that I think could quite possibly save the world.  It's a U.S.-based show, so in fact, perhaps, it might only save our country (but given our nuclear arsenal and disproportionate influence around the world, mayhap the world is right!).  

The concept is (and, I officially submit it here for consideration): 

A weekly news / talk program which features three guests and a host / moderator (ideally me, but if someone else takes on the project, I just ask for an associate producer credit {as well as the asidementioned 0.003% of all profits}).  The guests are completely randomly selected from across the country (and of course, because of my self-sabotaging tendencies my primary focus thus far on this project has been on how, precisely*, to define a randomly selected person in America), and each of the guests would be asked to submit a topic for conversation - whatever they are either most interested in or feel they would most like to cover - and then the four of us (3 guests plus the moderator) spend an hour or so talking about those topics.  Prior to each episode, the moderator would generalize and contextualize the topics enough so all guests could contribute (and the audience would care)^ and that's the show.

I have long suspected that randomly selected people would generally be better at most (general) tasks (like talking on TV or governing, say), if given the opportunity, than those who do it currently who have foisted themselves upon us.  I dare say that if we were to repopulate the entirety of the Halls of Congress (as well as all of the state legislatures and city halls) with randomly selected citizens of their respective states and districts a lot more generally good things for most people would get done more often.  I'm not the first to have this idea, and I must admit that in our current hyper-polarized climate I would be more than a little worried at who, exactly, would get selected in the first few cycles.  Information is the gasoline for a democracy, and we are currently living in a bad information age (think sugar in the tank).

Although we are living in the age prophesied by The Colbert Report - and beyond, where truthiness has given way to Choose-Your-Own-Truth-Venture where what you want to be true becomes true, because it supports your already existing pre-conceptions.  However, I don't think the state we find ourselves in just now needs to be permanent or even particularly long-lasting.  The main problem we have in our current culture is the monetary value of leveraged truths.  Getting people to believe your version of the truth is worth so much money to so many interests in terms of media messaging, political fundraising, and expenditures in our managed economy (i.e. which winners & losers we pick going forward) that the practice of swaying opinion is more important in most parts of our civilization today than actually studying to learn any particular truth.  A debate over whether Climate Change is real is worth much more to capitalism writ large than actually investing in combatting climate change (which, for the record, is real).

This doesn't need to be a permanent state of affairs, however, it needs to start with a majority of humans deciding and then actively advocating for the fact that improving the lives of the majority of humans is more important than continual marginal gains year over year in the Dow Jones Industrial and everyone's 401(k)s and capitalism's perpetuation.  That doesn't even have to mean, necessarily, that we need to end economic growth or overthrow capitalism... it just means that we have to agree that helping out the vast majority of humans so they can have adequate food, shelter, and dignity is at least slightly more important than 6% annual growth in your (and EVERYONE's) portfolio.  That's it, that's the ask, and it is astounding to me (and yet hauntingly familiar to me) that this is not a consensus proposition in America... at all.

* The random selection process would be a part of the weekly broadcast (or a separate "mini-episode"), and would entail some pomp & circumstance.  Because not every person in America will willingly partake, I think the best way to select a person is to first choose a community randomly (which can be done by a series of "weighted rolls" - e.g. if California is 70 times more populous than Wyoming, it would get that weighted probability and so too would every other state; from there, a county is chosen in the same way and so on down, until we get to a specific neighborhood, village or city block).  The plan would be to offer a month of free, high-speed wifi in their area as well as a goPro or similar easy to use, low-cost web cam to the chosen guests both as a thank you and a way to convince people to take part.

^ Ergo, if guest #1 says what is most important to him is his neighbor's tree branches encroaching on his yard and dropping leaves all over his yard and he should be able to make his neighbor come over and rake because it's the latest tree to drop leaves in the whole city, and always after the city's yard waste pick-up has ended and I hate MY NEIGHBORS AND THEIR SCREAMING KIDS IN THE BACKYARD... ahem... - that conversation for the panel may be neighbors and community changing over time from front porches to fenced-in back yards to NextDoor...

There is no date in history

I've posted "on this date" posts since the very earliest days of RNJ (at least after one full cycle around the sun), and I feel like they are a vital part of this blog project.  I have often returned in this blog to the theme of nostalgia, and made a few contradictory arguments about it, I think...

 As I looked back on my March 2nd posts, I found one that has now got me quite flummoxed... It's a post from March 2, 2009, and it reviews the "new" Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.  It also includes a brief comments conversation, also dated in early March 2009.  As I was re-reading the post, I thought to myself, "wow, I can't believe Fallon has been hosting this show for 12 years already," and then I really pressed myself and thought that no, it simply wasn't possible that it has been that long... 6 or 7 years, maybe, but not more than 10.

[side note: I have now reached an age where these sorts of things occur to me frequently, and I think to myself things like, wait, this or that event in history (personal or writ large) cannot be as far away in time as it appears to be, and yet it usually is.  Time has gotten tricky, but this time, I felt like I must be in the right.]

joel is baffled

And, it turns out that I was -  Fallon took over the show in 2014 (specifically 17 February 2014, so I could have been writing on March 2nd of that year, but the tone of the post is as if it's happening presently, not looking back a couple weeks).  In 2009, Conan O'Brien did take over The Tonight Show, but not until June of that year (and the post is all about Fallon, not O'Brien).

So now, I am baffled, and feel like I can't trust any dates ever again, and wtf is going on?  I enjoy calendrics and synchronicities and rhyming history, but now I'm not sure of anything anymore.  

In the end, it's okay, as I'm not actually typing this post (at least this part of it) on March 2nd anymore anyway, but I did originally have the thought to post this then, so there it will be forever classified.  I hope this warns us all to not let time slip away from us any more than we can help it.  It's a funning thing about time - you can spend it or you can pass it, you can definitely waste it (see Roman Numeral J).  I am hoping "Having Enough Time" wins the inaugural Tournament of Greatness (although it would be quite the upset as a 10-Seed).  

I remember the time that Tim sang the Hootie & the Blowfish song "Time" at karaoke, and it quickly became clear that it is the worst of the Hootie songs generally available to choose as your karaoke number.

The Seeger Family Christmas Letter (1st Draft)

Dear friends, family, Romans, and countrypersons,

What a year it has been, eh?  Or what a decade - or month (hour?)?  I don't have a good sense of time...

Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Keks, and I was born on 11 December 2018, so I've just recently turned 14 years old.  I am the smallest Grand-Dog of Donald and Hope Seeger (P.O. Box 304, Clinton, WI, 53525), and I currently reside in Milwaukee, Wisconsin - near the lake (which is awesome if you haven't been!!).

As most of you know, this year - 2020 - especially since mid-March has been unlike any in all of our lifetimes.  Hasn't it been great!!??  Humans at home ALL THE TIME!!!  They never leave, never have to put you in the kennel, are around to take you for walks all day long!

Anyway, it's been quite the wild ride has 2020.  As I mentioned, I live in Milwaukee with my humans, Joel and Brooke.  Since coming to live with them in February 2019, I've also spent a good deal of time visiting Don and Hope - who I get a real kick out of.  

*  *  *

the next morning...

I've been told - numerous times today already - that after making the request last evening that Keks draft the annual Seeger Christmas letter that Hope herself has started a draft of a letter, so we'll have a letter full of greetings and introductions* (beginnings are the best!) with the following uber-intro...

*  *  *

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God"

"The Gospel according to Saint John (1:1)" 

"My line comes down from Queen Ada, the sister of Malcolm IV, descended from King Duff, the first king of Scotland."

from Cash: The Autobiography of Johnny Cash, by Johnny Cash

"The terror that would not end for another 28 years, if it ever did, began so far as I can know or tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."

- Stephen King, It

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope..."

- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

    The beginnings are always the moments with all of the promise, indeed, all of the hope.  As we enter in to the start of a brand new year, 2021, which we may all remember best as the first year after 2020!, I thought we might do something a bit different, and offer you a sampling of beginnings of Seeger Christmas letters (we all know the beginnings of letters are the best part anyway!).  So without further ado: 

(submitted by Joel Seeger)

* If you would like to submit an introduction to be considered for the annual Seeger Christmas letter you can submit it to the comments below by 5:00pm CST on Saturday, December 19th, 2020.

State of Shame

Source: jsonline.com (feat. 11/11 when Mr. Stoli* & I
represent 2 of the 7,048 cases in WI)

I received a positive COVID-19 test result a little while ago.  As of this writing, I am only experience a couple of very minor symptoms (knock on wood), and I am now quarantined and have alerted everyone who has come within my zone of monstrosity in the 72 hours prior to first showing any symptoms at all.  I've done, in other words, everything I'm supposed to as far as I know (thus far without a promised call from a contact tracer, although I know they're quite busy). In fact, I've done pretty much everything I am supposed to the whole time - stayed home, kept our bubble limited, worn a mask when I do go out - and still contracted it...  

I only got a test on Monday because we were told that afternoon that my dad had tested positive when he was admitted to the hospital that afternoon (for non-COVID reasons).  My symptoms didn't develop until the subsequent day Tue (11/10), and I immediately started putting the timeline/storyline together in my head:

1. I contracted COVID from Brooke who picked it up from Papa when we were there a month ago when Andy went to Omaha.
2. My dad, who I now suspect is in the midst of a case of Long Covid, has had it for at least 6 - 8 weeks, thus leading to some of his underlying problems of late. 

My mom has been working the phones since Monday, talking to anyone and everyone who has been in contact with them (again, they've been limited in their contact, but with a more old people approach of people occasionally dropping off baked goods or casseroles, etc.). Her experience in making these calls, and my own as well in sharing with people my test result, has been one of immediate concern (with a pinch of accidental self-concern in the cases where there might have been minimal contact wit the callee) and then interrogation of blame (where did you get it / did you give it to _____?). In fact in Clinton there seems to be social phenomenon going on of people expressing some surprise when they learn of a case, because, it seems, so many who get a positive test tend to keep it under wraps if they can. It's better, it seems, to avoid becoming known as a spreader than to, in fact, limit any possible spreading you've done. 

In addition to my positive test, I am also currently unemployed - another badge of cultural shame I am wearing at this moment. It's not surprising, given the fact that I have either been fired or asked to quit by this boss in each of the past four presidential election years, but it is a condition I have had recommended to me that I mask, lest it make me undesirable. And so, Seeger Enterprises, Inc. (SEI) was born in October 2020 to little fanfare. Although it's activities are quite varied, if you want a free stock, you can sign up for Robinhood using this link, and support SEI's investments arm while getting yourself some free money (no deposit required, you just have to link a bank account).

To be clear, I am not actually ashamed of either of these current status, but it has made me painfully aware of my underperforming in the vast game of Anti-Shame that we are requested to take part in. As an active job seeker, I spend an inordinate amount of time on LinkedIn these days, and it is appalling (at least meinetwegen).  I realize not every working person is living their Office Space endless nightmare, and yes... somepeoplereallyliketheirjobs... but the performative nature of people singing the praises of aspects of their workplaces or their companies achievements is gross. It has close parallels to the toxicity of Facebook's personal vacation posts, etc. and yes this is all well discoursed (a la The Social Dilemma etc.), but when it gets to (semi-)forced fawning over your workplace it's borderline Corporate Fascism territory.

We need to work to decouple shame from status, but the capitalist social fabric we are all born into today makes that very difficult. There is no shame in being sick or poor or unemployed; no shame in being anything, really. Shame should come from actions (or inactions) - I do not want to dismiss the redeeming societal qualities of shame. If you actively work to 'cut labor costs' in your work or industry (i.e. work to pay people less): you should be ashamed of yourself. If you knowingly (or suspectingly) promote false narratives (e.g. herd immunity, voter fraud, etc.), which will result in more folks in your community getting sick and dying, you should be ashamed of yourself. When you (inadvertently or intentionally) perpetrate an act of dehumanization (and honestly, I think we all can be guilty of this from time to time - with folks of differing political or cultural views on Twitter or service employees irl) small or large, you should be ashamed of yourself.  

But that's what's so great about shame, when properly administered. When it targets an action and not a status (or a being), even our own, we can learn from it and adjust our behaviors in future. The political chant of repeating "Shame! Shame! Shame!" at legislators (or any action-takers who need to be held to account) works because it is objects to the action and not the actor (we chanted this at them not because they were Republicans, but because they were working to take collective bargaining rights away from unions {which is, like, what unions do!}, or forcibly separating children from their parents because they were attempting to cross a border, or trying to take away health insurance protections for pre-existing conditions from our nations most vulnerable). If they simply cease the shameful action, and take on another course, their shaming could end.

That's it, do good, be better, that's the post...

* I've long followed Mr. Stoli's Twitter feed without ever knowing who it was that I was following. Not, I assume, someone I know personally, but a kindred Milwaukee spirit who shares many of the same views and interests and haunts. So similar, in some ways, that when we were diagnosed on the same day i briefly suspected that he actually was me, and my anonymous Twitter account (then I shamefully remembered that my anonymous Twitter account has only managed 17 followers to date, while my friend here hovers around 1,000) 

A steady diet of red round things...

 

A pre-lunch snack (or perhaps it's elevensies), I have started in on Rage, which I am not sure I have ever read after first reading The Running Man a couple of weeks ago (again, a first for me, I think) so I could listen to the corresponding episode of my new favorite podcast, The Kingcast: A Stephen King Podcast for Stephen King Obsessives (their patreon page).  I've listened to half a dozen of the episodes so far, and really enjoy the fact that I may have found a couple of people who are as deeply enmeshed in King's oeuvre (and especially The Dark Tower stuff) as I am...  Almost.

Overall, not terribly inspiring... some radishes from Sendik's and some not-so-thrilling cherry tomatoes from the South Shore Farmer's Market.  Filtered Milwaukee tap water and a few chapters of Richard Bachman.

I've actually been on something of a Stephen King bender as of late (these are different than SK's benders from the old days), having finished his latest book of novellas, If It Bleeds, just this morning.  (This is actually how I usually read Stephen King, all at once for a few weeks or months, and then I leave it alone for a couple years while he builds up a new arsenal).

It got me wondering about his "Books of Four" habit (collections of 4 long short stories and/or 4 short novels/novellas/novelettes), but he really only has 3 of them now (or 4 if you count The Bachman Books), so perhaps it's not actually a pattern... Yet.

Terror | Terroir

 I've recently watched the Jordan Peele produced The Twilight Zone, and thoroughly enjoyed Get Out when it came out a few year's ago.  I've long made the case that horror is as (or more) necessary as terror, in our daily lives, and I think Peele's horror ouvre, as it continues to unfold in front of us, will provide an object lesson for my argument.

The other night, I watched Us, and was profoundly moved by it (and close to bowel-moved as well it was so freaking scary).  It is the story of a fear of an under-class rising up.  But this under-class is not comfortably something other.  Rather, they are us.

The notion is terrifying (as opposed to horrifying).  I do not love the quickly accessible distinctions between the two (including the one in my post linked to above); a more fulsome account, if desired.  The fear of the revolutionary uprising is something that the progressive / liberal-defining bourgeoisie want to mask.  We support (in principle at least) the overthrow of power, and watching these upper middle class families get their come-uppance is, I would argue, a terror movie rather than a horror movie.

But then, Peele does what he has done so marvelously in much of his recent genre work, he extends.  If you relish the terror of bourgeois families at their vacation houses getting terrorized and chased around by unknown baddies, then by extension you will cheer to yourself similar harassed and displaced.  Of course this (generally) does not hold true, and becomes where we enter the horror genre.  The apocalypse for everyone else and adventure / free to wander tale for ourselves is at the heart of the good old 'merican terror story (The Stand, The Road, Revolution, The Postman, et cetera et cetera).  We love these tales of terror as long as we are in the less than 0.6% who get to survive Captain Trips.

In Us, when we begin to see the masses of underworlders holding hands in lines across streets, in and out of buildings and over mountain roads, forming an echo (but what's the word for an echo that's louder - more heard!?) of Hands Across America, the implications begin to be horrifying.  They are coming for all of us: children and adults, black and white, rich and poor.  

For me personally, Hands Across America was already a horror-laden event.  In 1986, my two brothers and I piled in to the family station wagon with my dad, leaving my mom at home, and drove south toward central Illinois to join in the not-so-nationwide chain of humanity.  On the drive down, the three other boys in the car (7, 14 & 40 years my senior) were discussing apocalypse as some kooky preacher on the radio (and billboards I seem to recall) was predicting Armageddon in the coming days or weeks (evidently it wasn't high-profile enough to make this list, unless perhaps my memories are conflated).  My brothers and dad were discussing the concept academically (or at least the childish version of academically; my family, and in particular my dad, are textualist bible-y people, and while they didn't go in for specific predictions of any moment, I do have the sense that they all kind of generally believed in it 'eventually'), and my 8-year-old mind was swallowing it whole, and I was terrified that the end of my existence was mere days away (hours of it to be wasted in the way back of this damned car!). 

I don't believe that Jordan Peele tailored his horror story specifically to me, but I am curious (and it's probably too late to note, spoiler-alert) as to what the implications of the film might have been had it not been for the twistNotSoTwist ending.  Would Adelaide's (Lupita Nyong'o) doppelganger (Red), who in fact was Adelaide, have seemingly led the uprising had she not come originally from the top side. Revolutionary artists (or perhaps it's more often horror makers) often wind up creating works that actually make arguments quite the contrary to what they themselves believe or would espouse in the real world.  

• Thus, is the argument of Us that in order to make revolution, the underside need a spark (inspiration or perhaps permission) from a member of the ruling class?
• Just as the hippie horror-makers (Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter) wound up making conservative arguments warning about the dangers of teenage promiscuity...
• And a work of horror fiction as seemingly revolutionary as Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves winds up making a very very conservative argument (albeit circuitously).

It's not to say that it's the fault of these brilliant creators that their works wind up making conservative arguments that they'd rather not be making.  Rather it's the tricksy nature of working in the media of terror and horror and trying to bridge the gap.  It's why a filmmaker like George Romero was less susceptible to falling into the same trap, because he started with the horror and embraced it for its own sake, and the meaning came afterward.  When you try to wield the ephemeral (which is what you're doing when you're creating a work of art), it gets slippery, and doesn't always go where it wants.

It's why when the artistic mockery of religion that is televangelist doomsayers like Jack Van Impe and publishing powerhouses like Joel Osteen and religiosity-based "university" educators like Jerry Falwell Jr... 

• Ply their craft, they wind up arguing against their personal ownership or understanding of church doctrine, and their political and moral arguments (not to mention their continuing calls for their own personal enrichment) wind up making the case for exactly the opposite of their intent.