thu/20211118

Rain rain rain rain rain and Kirby has torn asunder a pad of sticky notes which says something about something but since my head is, at present, engulfed in a cacophony of barometric throbbing I'm unable to ascertain what that sticky something is. Sticky nom-noms. Sticky snackie noms. IDK but hey, the latest Squarespace update did indeed fix the lack of linking in the iPadOS app - YAY – but, as is the Squarespace way, broke the ability to edit photo blocks - BOO; someday they'll get it right, in theory.

wed/20211117

If nothing else good happens, the gift of being able to once again add links to posts via the Squarespace iPadOS app makes the week redeemable. Fingers crossed that the functionality remains for at least a few days before they break it again.

Rowing machine is assembled (thanks to help from Kirby, of course). Current thinking is to do two days of running followed by one day of rowing and repeat – this being dependent, however, on the impact (or lack thereof) that the rowing has on my blood sugar: if it results in me having to do more running in order to offset the lack of impact of the rowing, it's not worth it. Yoga will remain a constant – it's the only way I've been able to put in six miles a day, week in, week out, on my body – but, with increasing years, I can feel the impact of those daily six on my joints and, given that I want to continue this routine until the day I die, it’s time to find a way to give myself something of a break. Hopefully this'll do it.

A structure / design for re/emergence0005 is, well, emergent. Trying a switch to afternoon work today: when I jam the two blocks together in the morning, Kirby is a nightmare for the second (and for much of the rest of the day). Better to give him space to run around and have my attention and then, after lunch, go on our walk and return to work with a hopefully exhausted and nap-time-ready Kirby. In theory.

The day awaits.

PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950)

Richard Widmark plays a military doctor fighting the plague and the resentments, protestations, and deep-rooted distrust of the citizenry. Sound familar? A potent and thrilling examination of our remarkable capacity for self-destruction featuring Jack Palance in his screen debut.

(Directed by Elia Kazan from a screenplay by Richard Murphy and Daniel Fuchs (story by Edna and Edward Anhalt). Starring Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Jack Palance. Released 15 September 1950.)

Uno Moralez

I can’t recall how I happened upon Moralez’s work, but I’m so glad that I did. An excellent summation via this interview with Moralez in The Comics Journal:

Moralez is a Russian enigma whose LiveJournal is written in Cyrllic, whose work is both drawn and published in digital pixels, whose output comes in the form of bizarre and ferociously NSFW image/gif galleries as often as comics or illustrations, and whose name is not even Uno Moralez. Before I conducted this interview with him you could easily have convinced me he was an elaborate hoax

tue/20211116

Perpetual struggle, continued: the cessation of attempts to make The Work (at hand) be what I want it to be and instead act as its guide, its shepherd, to help it towards the realization of what it wants to be.

Meanwhile, in injuries: only took slicing the top joint of my right index finger on the door (thanks, Kirby + screen door) to recognize how much I use it: can't loop finger through coffee mug handle; can’t pull hair back; can’t floss; can't practice drumming while writing easily - fucking flamacues; can't type as quickly; can't (easily) latch my wife's necklace... How fortunate, then, that my middle finger has gotten so much of exercise over the last several decades.

Random nostalgia trip: as I grew up around darkrooms and photographic development, I've been missing the miasmatic delight of those chemicals. Telling, I think, that most of my childhood memories involve noxious fumes.

The day awaits.

“A Good Newsletter Exit Strategy Is Hard to Find”

(via Vanity Fair):

Layer in the ongoing Great Resignation energy (and like, a worldwide pandemic), and it’s no wonder that newsletter-writer fatigue has set in as writers begin navigating the logistical implications of signing themselves up as a one-person subscription product: How do you keep up with your publishing cadence? How do you make sure your readers are continuously getting their money’s “worth”? Does it feel fair to take a few weeks off for the holidays when people pay a monthly subscription?

And, if for whatever reason you need to quit, how do you get off this ride?

A good look at why I never joined the Substackian throng and have come to loathe a membership model (after considering one for MacroParentheticals and this space, I’ve settled on a tip-based busker approach) but a word WRT “newsletter-writer fatigue”: boo fucking hoo. I’ve been hurling my own unpaid efforts on a consistent – weekly, monthly, or bi-weekly – basis for the last ten years to a small if faithful readership because I like writing the newsletter and enjoy using the form as a means of communication: that said, had I added the pressure of making it my primary income stream, one in which I was in the obligation/debt of paying readership, I probably would’ve burnt the whole operation down years ago and gone off to pump gas or something.