Unposted on Election Night: Spoilers for Vengeance

 Okay, a little more about what's happening in US... 

 B.J. Novak's superb comedy "Vengeance" – released in 2022, but only caught by me on the plane back from Vancouver last August – charts an aspiring true-crime podcaster's attempts to document "the new American reality". And I mean charts. The film is a text. So this post isn't an in-depth review, just a recommendation. I'd originally meant to put it out as an immediate response to Trump's election victory back in November, because I thought: what rational reader wouldn't be thinking "Wait, what the hell's going on?" and I'd enjoyed the film as a search for some answers. Then I didn't post it, and now I've learnt the film's leaving Netflix on February 8th, so quick, HERE IT IS*

 I'll return to "Vengeance" in a bit, and maybe it's too late now for post mortems, maybe no-one's in the mood for "What happened was...", but it's only going to get later, so here's another search for answers I meant to share – answers other than just "Everyone's Abandoned Democracy", which seems hopeless if true – and by the way, I'm so glad Jon Stewart's back...

 

 "What happened was, the country felt like Government wasn't working for them, and – the Democrats, in particular – were taking their hard-earned money, and giving it to people who didn't deserve it as much as them. And so the Democrats got shellacked."

 Or, as Jennifer Pahlka puts it even more succinctly in this article:

"the reality is that Republicans let their voters choose the candidate, and Democrats didn't - twice." 

 Maybe what resounded most, then, rewatching "Vengeance" after Trump's terrifying majority, were its final words, so here are SPOILERS... Our hero's initial understanding of events, before he even arrives in Texas, has proved completely correct: the girl he hooked up with in New York was just a hookup, and despite the conspiracy narratives spun by her family, she did die of an opiate overdose. But his understanding of everything else now – how to act, how to choose, how to love, how to remember... the big stuff – is scorched earth, and when he concludes to her mother, as we're all taught to conclude, "No regrets", the Texan muses back:

"I never understood that... No regrets... In my life, everything starts with a regret... Ends with a regret... In between, regrets... It's all regrets... You run as fast as you can from the last regret... And of course you're just running straight into the next one... That's life... It's all regrets... That's what you should say... No other way to be alive... It's all regrets... Make 'em count."

 

"So Six Flags, the theme park..."

 

"Exactly."

 

* UPDATE: For those who can, it's now up on All4 HERE.

Sometimes this blog will just be Daniel Hodges.

 

 It's important to me to keep this blog from becoming just another reaction to the big thing, a somewhere else from stuff. But I acknowledged Trump when he won back in 2016, so I'll allow him another mention here. Daniel Hodges' reaction to the presidential pardons of insurrectionists who tried to gouge out his eyes is the kind of cold, heartfelt reality check his country needs as many of and as soon as it can get, and unlike the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde's sermon to Trump upon his inauguration (reaction shit posted below) – which I'm guessing most readers will have already seen – it's an address explicitly directed to "everyone watching", so I'm happy to boost those numbers. 

 

 Another great reminder of how much power we do and don't have right now is a fleeting story I saw on instagram, which said – perhaps in reaction to the breadth of the brim on Melania's hat – "If you've kissed a loved one on the cheek today, remember, you're more powerful than the president." 

 We have more resources for reaching out to and checking upon each other than have ever existed before. Let's use them. I hope you're all doing tremendously.

Some Nearly Wordless Pics of Languedoc Until the Keyboard's Fixed

  

 

 

 

 Click to embiggen. And spot the dog.

Is it a loud man getting things wrong?

 Here, ol' Unattendees, to celebrate my love for you all, is a tree giving a little house a hug. Sorry I haven't been posting more, but I am once again between keyboards (in case you were wondering, this post has been compiled entirely from copying and pasting parts OF ITSELF) but this hardware situation should be resolved when I get back from France, pictured above – where I have, as always, been spending Christmas with my folks – and below is the advert that will pay for it:

 

 I might even have enough left over after to take a show to Edinburgh, something I haven't dared do since 2001. Guess which show. "I don't know, Simon. How many shows have you made?" Well exactly, that one. Although, thinking on the previous post, I am growing obsessed (again*) with how abysmal a part of real world, far right economic discourse beloved, old sci-fi tropes such as space exploration and Ai have become, so maybe it will be two shows! Maybe it will be none! No, I've written it down now (or pains-takingly pieced it together from individual characters torn from THIS VERY POST) and 2025 is likely to frighten a lot of us anyway, so nits like me, who are sitting pretty pretty, should give courage a go too! Happy... changing things, then. Yeah. No. Franceuck it. Happy 2025, readers. Happy Change. 

 

Vancouver last August, where this ad was filmed – along with many futuristic sci-fi shows from the noughties, meaning I'd wanted to visit this city for decades. But when I finally get there, everywhere else had caught up, and the biggest thing distinguishing this Pacific shoreline now from, say, Leeds or Chelsea Wharf is just the number of people to a canoe.

 

* Did you get that that was what "Time Spanner" was about? I mean, it was about other stuff too.

EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE 32: Where Pounds Won't Go!

"Pound as in the pounding of these zammoths' feet?"

"What zammoths? The ones to our right?"

"The ones I'm pointing at. Well, yeah, those ones, okay. God. So I wasn't exactly pointing at them. But yeah. God."

"No. Pounds as in insert-national-currency-here. The future has no regulated currency."

"Oh, and air?"

"No. And no zammoths. They're hallucinations. This planet's atmosphere is too thin. We're dying of radiation sickness."

"Speak for yourself. My body's packing in because it doesn't know how to function on a planet that has only a third of Earth's gravity. Hey, where are those guys going?" 

"I can't see what you're pointing at."

"Forget it... Where are we again?"

"Fucking everywhere, apparently."

 

 Illustration by nobody.

Election Rabbit Hole

 As America marks Bonfire Night just as we marked Independence Day, let's let it happen and just crawl down a hole, because it's all okay, look into the screen, closer, I found the hole. Come on. Let's go. Just for now. Into the screen...

 

 Once you're out, don't look up how old Kane Pixels is (no relation) or how he shot this. But do look up parts three and one, especially if you're into horror and into general and zillenial definitions of the liminal (thresholds and corridors) because both The Oldest View and its creator are doing something quite firsty. In fact, look up how it was shot as well, and maybe also look at this video about Utopian Botanist Julien Bercheron and the Vally View Mall, Texas, which mysteriously appeared once in my recommendations, and led me to this hole.

Platypus Vobiscum: a Pius Reader

Being further unsorted contributions to the Church of the Cosmic Platypus, salvaged over the course of two seasons working at "Phantom Peak" from Pius' easel in the corner of Old Town, together with illuminations – some by the author – also sundry anonymous annotations (click to embiggen)...

"Platypus Vobiscum. That's how you work the system. When it works, it works. Peace. Peace. Stop saying Peace. Take. For example take a moment. Did you mean Piece? Do you remember the psalm about the jigsaw? He puts pieces in the jigsaw. And he starts with the corners. The jigsaw is the pieces. Pushing can be pulled. Ink can run out. And then come back. Personally hopping about on the track, listening for rumbling. 

Back to the Circle. Start again. Start at the side."

"Well we start there. Stop saying Stop. Leave me be believe me. NOT EVERYTHING IS A CLUE! THERE you are, you naughty little bargain. I'm not saying the gloves are 'off' off, but nobody seems to be wearing gloves. 'I literally just got off my horse.' It is perfectly possible to exist in a state where you can INSTANTLY decide what being – say – this pen feels like. Or the candles. But I don't know you can do it with your eyes closed. Or you would do it differently. The whole concept of 'wrong', in a way, is – Oh I wanted to say 'wrong'. But."

 

"Is any dance a mandatory movement?

Vanity. Vanity. All is vanity. Apart from dressing as an Oompah Loompah.

Mockery is the sincerest form of flattery. No? But mockery just means imitiation.

In spite of its numerous legs and armour, the millipede is not the strongest animal in the pet shop. The strongest animal in the pet shop is the shopkeeper, for they feed the pets."

"The olden times had no eraser. So sometimes the angels would just look like bats. Imagine if angels hated their wings. What works is a piece of man." 

 

"Who was the first to sit down? When we were shrews, did one of us sit down and realise our hands were now free. But they had not the strength to use them. The more shoes I wear, the more I realise how little I understand about shoes. They go up and down with your feet.

But how?

I'm bang on time, and now does Time bang on me. Ribbons. Safer than candles. Three & four & never more."

"This is why old Mister Sleevey is very careful about where he sets up his knockoffables. And a good scribe always knows where the paper ends. 

I met a blogger from some retro land who said 'Two massive kneecaps – nobody knows whose – take up the landing, hairy lean and tanned. I think they might belong to Nerys Hughes, but now I can't remember how this poem originally scanned.' That's all they said. Then, falling on their face – as if to salvage some measure of grace, after such a dwindling finish – they uttered one last 'Thanks' in accents tinnish. But I would not be moved. I stood there still. I mean still like – oh, you know. And moved, as in Not here because they're there now.

All water is a feature. Even ice.

'a' came after 'the' because it changes the subject.

INFECTIOUS"

 

"Ordinarily this is not a forum for factional hoots. Changing one's mind can be be very useful. Two types  – at least – of crossing out (motives for deletion) A mistake or a change of heart."

 

"This is just to say that

I have sold the elephant

foot umbrella stand

Things fall on my back. And the trays are wet. And the shirts we wash are never as clean as the shirts we didn't buy.

Handwriting wasn't always calligraphy. Who wants to learn cursive when you can sprout the sentence separate and friendly. Not formal and exclusive. And when did exclusive become a compliment?"  

"I've drawn a little city. It's looking pretty pretty.

One can imagine the future, and spend all that time grieving.

SINGS: Elbows and kneecaps and drops of brown liquid. Nicknames that hurt like a stone or a stick would. Hairplugs that give you a tickle-y cough. These are some things that I hope will fall off. Hubcaps and breezeblocks and bits of old sofa. Pablo Neruda and Gordon the Gopher.

Happiness is a sense of control."